Glowing
by TheFirstDayOfSpring
Summary: AU: After Rachel Berry breaks up with her boyfriend in New York, she decides to leave Broadway and move to Washington to work for the FBI. She gets paired up with Quinn Fabray. As their relationship develops, Quinn seems to have more and more secrets and when she leaves Washington, Rachel goes after her. It turns into an emotional road trip and their relationship grows stronger.
1. Chapter 1

When I felt her soft lips pushing gently against my forehead this morning, I woke up, but I didn't open my eyes, or get up. I thought she was still lying on the other side of the bed, and I was too sleepy to consider otherwise. I inhaled extra deep when I smelt the scent of her shampoo. I smiled, and I guess I fell back asleep right after, because I can't recall the door closing behind her.

I woke up later, but I don't know how much. I looked at the other side of the bed, but she wasn't there. And she wasn't anywhere else in the room and I didn't hear the shower running. I couldn't think of other places she could be, because all this motel room had were a dirty looking grey bedroom and a green tiled bathroom, so small that when you had to pee, your legs were almost under the shower.

I sat up and looked around, not really worried yet. I figured she was just checking out or something, since she said she didn't want to stay that long. So I got up.

I opened the suitcase and immediately saw some of her clothes were missing. That's when I started to panic. I put on some clothes before I stormed to the door. I looked outside. She wasn't checking out. She wasn't just taking a walk. She's gone.

_Eight months earlier _

I felt the steering wheel slip through my sweaty hands a little as I drove onto the parking lot. I inhaled deeply and heard myself squeaking as I sighed out. I had never been that nervous in my life. I used to have auditions all the time, and if I did well I had five plays a week. Most of them were big productions on Broadway, others were small, but I loved it just the same. But the nerves I felt that day couldn't compare.

Maybe because this is not a play. This is a job. And what kind of job.

I woke up that morning, again wondering why I had chosen for this and if I'd made the right choice. I was kind of shocked when my alarm clock went off, since I was used to 10 o'clock rehearsals and some extra dance classes in the afternoon and I was worried I'd be late. But I was done twenty minutes before I had to go, which made me stress even more.

I hoped that day would put an end to my endless doubt as I stopped the car. I looked up at the huge building. There were a lot of buildings like these in Washington and they were so different from the ones in New York, I would never have found it without the navigator. I looked for an excuse to stay in the car a little longer, like a nice song on the radio, but in my stress I forgot to turn the radio on when I left. I rubbed my hands in an attempt to get the sweat off, but it only made it worse.

_What am I doing?_ I asked myself for about the millionth time that month. _There's no way back now._ I looked at the building again. _The buildings in New York are so much prettier. _

"You?" my dad said, when I first told him about my plans. "Rachel, you used to cry for hours when you had a paper cut. You would never hurt a fly. A little change every now and then is okay, but don't you think this is a little drastic?" I said I had made up my mind. I said there was nothing they could say that would hold me back.  
"But sweetie," my other dad tried. "You love New York. Washington is nothing like it." Everything they said was true and I knew as well as they did that they were right. But I wanted to do this. I think I really did.

"Stop," I said out loud, to my inner voices and memories. I put on a big fake smile, hoping it would make me believe that was how I felt, like I would to prepare for a new role. I grabbed the little suitcase from the passenger's chair. I wasn't sure why I brought it. I had seen people walking around with them in movies, so I figured I'd bring one, even if it was just to look more serious.

I got out of the car and pulled the ends of my jacket. I kept smiling and nodded to people I met as I walked into the building. My nerves got pushed aside for a minute when I saw the entrance hall again. It was so big and impressive. The marble walls made me feel safe, and their heights made me feel small, which calmed me down a bit. It reminded me of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York and I felt a little bit home for the first time since I arrived in Washington.

"You must be Berry," a soft voice said when I was walking to the elevators. I turned around and my eyes met the dreamy ones from a blond woman about my age. For a moment, I kept quiet. Her eyes were really beautiful. I could tell they were usually hazel, but from this view, with the marble reflecting the fresh morning sun around the hall, her eyes were gold.

"Yes," I said, when I found my speech back. I stuck my hand out to shake hers. "Rachel Berry."

"Quinn Fabray," she said. _Quinn_. The sound of her name roamed around in my head for a while. The way she'd said it sounded so nice. "Nice to meet you. You can come with me." _I will come with you._ But she stayed where she was, because we had to wait for the elevator to come down. It arrived with a soft 'pling'. I'd always hated that sound, as much as I hated elevators in general. They took my balance away for a while, sometimes it would take me hours to walk straight again. I would have taken the stairs, but I had to be pretty high up and now I had to stay with Quinn.

We stepped into the elevator and before even picking a floor, she closed the doors. I guess she didn't really like company in an elevator either.

"It seems you'll be my old partner," she said. "Oh," I replied, swallowing hard as I realized I probably had to spend a lot of time with her. And I wasn't sure why, but that excited me. "That's nice."

"Sure." I couldn't really tell how she felt about it. An awkward silence hung around us until the elevator stood still.

The rest of my first day included meeting up with the boss of the department, Lance Clayton, a serious looking man, but quite cynical at some moments, which made it hard for me to understand how he meant what he said, again, which he referred to as the 'hunters club', and I guess that made sense. He explained that me and Quinn would 'go out on the field' next week, to show me what it was like and after that I had to decide if I still wanted to go for this. I thought he was joking.

I met the other agents, but Quinn called them hunters, so I guess the hunters club was a pretty serious code name. There was one dark skinned guy, with a playful smirk constantly covering his face. He introduced himself as Benji, no last name, just Benji. And his eyes were really nice looking. He was really handsome and I couldn't help but smile when he looked at me.

We drank coffee with the other members and then she took me to the office. The other members all stayed in the coffee room, I guess that was how a usual day started for an FBI agent. Drinking coffee with your coworkers. Kind of like actors, I thought.

The office was a huge hall, with short walls to separate the little area's with desks in them. I think there were about forty of them. On the left side there were actual walls, consistent of only big windows with blinds behind them. It looked ridiculously boring. I prayed I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time there.

She directed me to my desk, which was next to hers and the window. I looked outside and felt my stomach clench when I saw how high we were up.

"The view is pretty amazing, isn't it?" Quinn said. I hadn't looked much farther than the parking lot, but when I did, I saw buildings on my left, and straight ahead, but when I looked between the two buildings across from the one I was in, I saw a big green park, and right behind that, I saw the shore. A boat full of tourists slid through the water so slowly you could barely see it moving. And it was indeed pretty amazing, as far as you could see from there.

I turned away from the window to look at my desk. There was a box on it, with someone's stuff in it, but for the rest it was completely empty.

"He never even came to pick up his stuff," Quinn said, slightly annoyed.

"What happened?" I asked, slightly worried. "He seemed so strong in the gym. Pissed his pants and froze when I needed him." I got a little more worried. I wouldn't even seem strong in the gym. I was hired on my sweet looks that would come in handy to mislead the wolf. Those were the literal words mr Clayton used. I wondered what I would do if Quinn needed me and tried to imagine what kind of situation that would be anyway.

"It's okay," Quinn said. I think she saw my eyes widening at my thoughts. "I asked for a female partner. You'll do fine." I smiled nervously and looked in her direction. She walked towards my desk and took the box while she mumbled, "I'll take care of this." She took it to another desk and I waited for her as I set my suitcase on the desk.

"Why did you want a female partner?" I asked when she came back. She didn't say anything for a while, like she didn't realize I was asking her and then suddenly remembered. "I just figured we would make a better team." And then she turned around and walked towards her own desk.

I spend the day meeting some club members and starting things up. I didn't see Benji, though, Quinn said he was preparing for a 'hunt'. She said she thought we would get one soon and that we would start my personal training the day after, because she wanted to see what I was capable of. She basically wanted to see whether I was strong enough to be thrown in front of the big bad wolf, or to be the one saving her from it.


	2. Chapter 2

I tried to call, but she left her phone in the motel room. I found it beneath her pillow, where she always left it, strangely enough. I put it in my left pocket, my own phone in the right. I grabbed some clothes that were lying around on the floor and threw everything that was ours in our suitcase.

I dragged the suitcase across the parking lot and let it go when I reached her car.

_How could I be this stupid? _I felt like yelling at myself and I wanted to scream, but right now I just had to stay strong and think really hard.

I went to the reception to check out, if Quinn hadn't already. The old lady wiggled through the door behind the counter when she heard the bell ringing when I opened the door.

"Oh, hello," she said.

"Hi," I started, and I realized I was trying pretty hard not to cry. "Did my- uhm, friend check out when she left this morning?"

"The blonde?" She shoved her glasses a little farther up her nose, as if she had to think about whom I was talking about, while I was pretty sure there were no other guests in the motel - and there hadn't been in a while.

"Yes," I almost whispered. I hated talking in this state.

"She did," she smiled. "I thought you left with her."

"At what time did she leave?" I started to get frustrated. I wanted her to understand what was going on and what she had to say. But she didn't. And I couldn't blame her.

"About half an hour ago." I felt my eyes widening as they lit up.

"Did you see which way she went?"

_Seven months earlier_

"We don't need to go over the plan _again_, right?" Quinn asked, when she stopped the car in front of the bar where I would meet my first wolf.

"No, I get it now," I said, nervously. Quinn had assured me that if I did everything by the plan, nothing could go wrong. It was her who was going to steal the show this time. All I had to do was open and close the curtains at the right time and take care of some of the lighting.

In the past month, I was learned some tips and tricks on how to get someone unconscious safely and I got explained very clearly what I had to do with the special button on the new phone they got me. I had to push it when we were ready and the zoo keepers would come to pick our wolf up. I learned all these codenames and I actually started to use them, though it felt a little ridiculous in the beginning, but I guess it made sense.

My first hunt was going to be an easy one, and I noticed Quinn was a little upset that she had to 'catch a rabbit'. A rabbit is a criminal who wasn't very dangerous or hard to tackle, but I felt like it was quite a dangerous job no matter what, so I called everyone a wolf.

Everyone advised me to just watch Quinn closely and I would pick it up soon enough. I was an actress after all. So my part wasn't very big tonight, I would be lucky if I even got mentioned in the credits, and yet I was more nervous than ever.

"Nothing's gonna happen, Rachel," Quinn said when I sighed loudly. "Look at me." I looked sideways into her golden eyes. "You're gonna do fine. I'm gonna be okay. Tomorrow we'll celebrate your first successful hunt. Because you're gonna do fine." I didn't understand how she could trust me so much. If I failed, I would ruin her life. But she seemed to either really believe in me or she just didn't care so much.

"Let's go," she said. Of course she wasn't nervous. She'd taken wolfs much bigger than this one. And she actually had to hunt them, not just catch them. Actually shoot them. And I was worried about turning in a rabbit.

I sighed once more, but now leaving only confidence. _I can do this. _So I made sure I still had my phone and practiced the tricks I'd learned as we made our way to the entrance. Quinn took my hand to stop me from it and I started to get nervous again.

There were no security guards outside the door or anything, it wasn't a very fancy bar, like the ones I went to in New York. Bad music was playing inside and everything looked gross. Few people were dancing, and if they were it looked strange. It wasn't very charming, or even rhythmic.

We made our way to the bar. "Don't even take a sip," I made out of the whisper she husked into my ear.

"I know," I replied, while I followed her through the crowd. There were old people, mostly men, and they were all looking at me as if I were a flirty teenager with a lot of cleavage and a lack of skirt. Which I wasn't, really. And neither was Quinn, tonight. I guess she figured it wouldn't be necessary in this company. We got to the bar, where Quinn ordered two glasses of pure vodka, which wouldn't have been my choice, but I wasn't allowed to drink from it anyway.

She handed me one of the glasses and looked around. After a short while of stretching her neck out in several directions, looking for the man who's picture we'd been looking at for the past weeks, she tapped me on the shoulder as if she didn't have my attention already and pointed her finger through the crowd behind me. I looked, but there were too many people for me to see who she was pointing at.

She stepped behind me as I turned around, lay her hand on my waist and her chin on my shoulder. It took me a moment to realize she was only trying to make me see Fawkes, by turning my vision into hers and I almost forgot what we came there for. The feeling of her gentle, soft hands to the sensitive skin of my hip made my breath stock for a moment and my heart started beating fast.

It didn't help when I finally spotted Fawkes, our wolf. His head was bold, but he left his goatee on his chin, which made him look kind of gross. He was very tall and wide and he was showing off his muscles by wearing a short sleeved black t-shirt. I turned my head sideways, trying not to stop looking at Fawkes, because I wasn't sure if I would find him back if I lost him now, but as soon as the tip of Quinn's nose entered my sight, I failed. The only thing that kept me in character, to use my own terms for once, was the way she stayed focused.

She let go of me and only then I realized my distraction had been a very unlikely thing to happen to me. I was trained to cope with a little distraction.

One time I was in the debut play of a well known director, who had rewarded himself with a nine year long hiatus after a few very successful musicals on Broadway in five years. In one of the love scenes, my co-player had a stroke. Right on the stage, he just dropped. And the director kept motioning me to go on. It felt a little barbaric to keep acting while my partner got dragged off the stage by two extras, but the audience and the pressure of the press and critics was too big to blow the entire play off, so I never broke character and improvised a completely new scene until his substitute was ready to come up.

I guess you could say I saved the act with my outstanding professionalism. That's what the director told me afterwards. My co-player was fine, too. But he never got back on the stage. Too risky. But from that moment on I had been very proud of my outstanding professionalism.

And somehow, Quinn took that all away.

She nodded her head to let me know she was ready. I wasn't, but if we had to wait for that, Fawkes would have had already left by the time we could do something, so I followed her through the crowd. She stood still about five yards away from him, gestured me to stay in that exact place and continued walking towards the wolf.

It took me only half a minute to conclude this was going to be the hardest part of the hunt. Or maybe even the entire job. Watching her walk right into the trap. And though this wasn't a very dangerous trap, the long period consequences left out, it was still hard to see her touching that dirty bastard with those soft, gentle hands, that had only just been touching me and her golden eyes looking up at him as if she was actually into him. And that wasn't supposed to be hard for me anyway.

After a while of obnoxious fake giggling and flirting, Quinn brought her hand to her mouth and lifted her heels even higher than her shoes were already forcing her to, to whisper something in Fawkes ear.

"I would like a big piece of your home baked apple pie," she would say. That was the code. It took us weeks to figure that out, while all we had to do was adjust some bugging equipment to a suspected costumer's shirt.

It took some more flirting before the guy finally gestured her to follow him. He walked all the way to the other side of the bar again. I kept the five yards between us as I followed them, never taking my eyes off my wolf this time.


	3. Chapter 3

I changed the radio channel about fifteen times before I realized not a single song would fit my current mood. I turned the radio off and put my sunglasses on as the sun shone a little brighter by the minute.

I couldn't take the silence either, but that wasn't the worst thing on my mind. The lady from the motel said she took off to the north. I could recall pretty clearly she told me we were headed to the west when we left yesterday morning. But she wouldn't have left on her own if she was gonna be completely honest with me.

So I kept going north.

_Seven months earlier _

I walked into the office the next day and as soon as the people on the first desks noticed me, the entire room started applauding for me. Although I was used to some applause, I had no idea how to respond to this surprise.

"I told you we would celebrate your first successful hunt, right?" Quinn walked up to me and hugged me tight. It was like she pushed all the air out of my lungs and stopped my heart for a second, but she wasn't squeezing that hard.

"You caught the biggest drug dealer in Washington," Benji said, who was now standing behind me. Quinn let go of me and Benji put his arm around my waist. "The newbie caught Lars Fawkes!" he yelled, pointing his left index finger at me. The room started cheering and clapping again and Benji instructed a secretarian to get me some coffee.

"It was actually all her," I said, pointing at Quinn, trying not to smile too big.

"No no, I couldn't have done it without you," she said and this time I had to turn my head to hide the enormous smile that sentence somehow gave me.

"Don't you guys have anything better to do?" I laughed. Benji announced we would finish the party tonight in a bar down the street.

Me and Quinn had nothing to do for the rest of that day. Nothing in particular. The club left her hunters alone after a hunt, so they'd have time to rest a little and prepare well for whatever next hunt they would get.

So before lunch, we helped out Benji and his partner Norah, who were about to catch a forger. Not the hardest job, Benji'd said, but it took some thinking to get right. We went to a small office on the side of the big one, where we sat on the end of a big table and listened as Norah laid out the case.

This woman they were about to track down seemed to be quite brilliant. She was pretty successful until this hotel she'd worked for a while declared her to the police, but she never gave away her real name. The police had tried to find out about her past, but there didn't seem to exist any Lauren Vandale from Boston. That's where they handed the case to the FBI.

"I used her picture to find out more," Norah said. "She currently lives in New York, so of course people have seen her. Turns out she works at the Guggenheim museum now, under the name Leila Vos."

"She kept the same initials," I said, just to have something to say and be helpful. I'd written both names down in a notebook and it just struck to me as suspicious, maybe.

"Exactly," Norah said. I smiled, because my comment hadn't been as stupid as I thought. Some of her past names were Linda Varenheim and Lucy Vincents."

"Do the letters LV mean something else?" I asked, trying to maybe get to something.

"Probably her own initials," Benji replied. "And they can't all be anagrams," he added as I started hustling the letters of all the names Norah had just mentioned. He was probably right. Quinn sniggered softly next to me.

"Good thinking," she said, and her tone made me realize I had misinterpreted her snigger, because she meant it. Or at least, she wanted me to believe she meant it.

"So you guys are going to New York soon?" I asked when Benji stood up for lunch.

"We're leaving tomorrow," Norah said. I wished them luck and we all left to the cafeteria.

Quinn and I spend the afternoon practicing or hunting skills in the gym. We jogged around the gym like we had every day before our first hunt. My perseverance had become a whole lot better since I started training. I could go five rounds without stopping. In New York I wouldn't have made it two.

"You can't stop running when there's a guy with a chainsaw running after you!" Quinn would yell at me in the beginning when I gave up. And then she laughed because the possibility of that happening was rather small, but she kept running for ten rounds after I'd stopped eight laps before.

I wanted to walk towards the strength training room after breaking my personal record to six rounds and having rested for a while, but Quinn grabbed my wrist. She'd trained her muscles enough and probably forgot about that sometimes, because she pulled my arm a little too hard and I almost fell. She caught me in her arms.

"Woops," she said, giggling softly. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said. We stood there for just a little too long. I looked her and she cleared her throat awkwardly and let me go. "We're not gonna lift today." Her face turned to normal again and she firmly walked out in front of me, back to where we entered the gym.

In those past weeks, I had tried to get to know Quinn. I tried really hard, because I spent so much time with her, but it just didn't work. I had no idea if she even liked me or not. She seemed quite annoyed with me half of the time, because I was inexperienced and somewhat of a coward when it came to doing things. I was quiet and insecure most of the time because I was still getting the hang of things and I had the idea Quinn got a little frustrated by that. She was good at everything she did and then there was me, taking her back to the first level when she had almost reached the end of the game.

But then there were moments like these, when she pulled me by my wrist and giggled at my weak reaction, not because it was stupid, but because she thought it was cute or something. Like when she'd sniggered at my attempt to impress in the small office. Those weren't mean gestures, but I had no idea what else they were.

She didn't stop to change in the dressing room. She just walked out into the hallway in her blue shorts and black tank top and I went after her.

"Where are we going?" I asked when I caught myself staring at her back and a little bit down and getting lost in the way she elegantly moved her hips as she walked. I felt a little weird.

"It's about time you learn how to use a gun," she said, and suddenly I was back to the FBI head quarters, Washington, Maryland.

"Really?" I asked, trying to keep my eyes in their sockets. The whole badass FBI dream had started when I had watched movie with Angelina Jolie shooting all these bastards' asses and I thought, 'I can try…', so I went here. To hold a gun and look as badass as Angelina Jolie.

"Yes, you silly, that's what it's all about, right?" _Did she just call me_ _silly_?

She opened a door to our left. "Do you have your pass with you?" she asked, as we entered a small room that was poorly lit. The walls were black and I had to squint to try to see anything, but then I realized there wasn't much to see, apart from another door.

"Yes," I said. She'd told me on my very first day, right when she gave it to me, to always bring my pass everywhere I went. I didn't really understand what it was good for until then. She held her own pass in front of a device that was hanging next to the door. The door slid to the side and, again, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me through.

I didn't really need my pass now, but I realized I wouldn't want it to end up in the wrong hands as I found out what was in the next room.

I had never really learned anything about guns at all, and this room made me feel a little hopeless about having to. There were so many different shapes and sizes, I had no idea where to even start. Big ones were hanging from the left wall, small ones on the right. There were really old ones, just for show, I guess, and really modern ones. Some didn't even look like guns.

Quinn took two quite new ones from the right wall and tossed one towards me. It startled me a little, but then I realized they probably weren't loaded yet, so I caught it just before it would be too late. It was pretty 'silly' and she giggled again. I threw her a serious look and said, "Watch out. I'm holding a gun now." And she said, "Yeah. Me too."

We spend the following two hours on the indoor shooting range, which was dark, except for the lit up target dolls. They were actually just wooden cut outs of a male upper body, but it was quite fun to practice on.

Quinn had showed me how to load a gun first in the separate bullet room and she'd taken a lot of ammunition into the range, because she was going to teach me well at once.

I figured she must have had a reason for the shooting lesson, but she didn't say anything about it.

She demonstrated the first shot on a cut out target. "Look at me, not the target," she said. It was hard to hear through the earplugs, but whether I would have heard it or not, that wasn't going to be a problem.

I watched her as she stood straight up, her right arm stretched out with the gun, her elbow resting on her left hand. Her left eye was closed as she looked over the small but firm barrel of the gun. Her lips parted slightly in concentration and her mandible stuck out just a little more than usual. And for the first time I found a word that suited her. _Hot_.

I jumped back when she fired the first bullet. The sound had been way louder than I'd imagined with the earplugs in, which made me fall back down to earth and almost to the ground. I kept my feet on the ground, though, and followed Quinn's eyes as she blew a wisp of blond hair from her face.

The bullet went straight through where the heart would have been, if wooden cut outs of half men had hearts. This one would have been dead.

"Your turn," she said, smiling as she loosened her tense position and lowered her arms. I took the gun from the table where I'd left it when I was watching her, because I was a little scared to hold it for some reason.

I walked to where she was standing and she stepped back to take her position behind me. I did exactly what I'd seen her do, but she still had a lot to adjust. She straightened my back and shoulders a bit more, using her hands at first. But then she was going to put my arms in place and she put her arms around me. I felt a little uncomfortable, but on the other hand I was holding a gun and I had never felt that badass in my entire life, so I was okay with it. Her chest pushed against my back softly, but I kind of ignored it by concentrating on her hands, sliding over my arms gently to place them the way she wanted to. She didn't let go of my shoulders or step back and get her chin from my shoulder as she said, "Pull." I almost forgot what she meant as I felt her breath moving my hair a little.

I pulled the trigger, but since I didn't pay much attention to the whole aiming part, I didn't even hit the cut out, but the wall behind it, which was resistant to that. But that didn't take away anything of the feeling of firing your first bullet.

Or maybe that rush in my veins was caused by a different fire. I couldn't really tell.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note: Hey guys, sorry for the late update. Anyway here it is, I hope you like it. Please review if you do or if you don't.  
**I have made some changes in this chapter later on. It clarifies things a bit more, but it's only for the newer readers I guess. **

"What are you doing?" I asked when I walked into Quinn's apartment yesterday morning, holding two paper cups containing steaming hot coffee. She was throwing small piles of clothes into an opened suitcase next to her bed. I put the coffee on the counter and awaited the answer.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. She sounded slightly irritated, though she was usually quite happy when I came by for a surprise visit before work. It was a sunny Friday morning in the early spring and the city was coming alive after a cold, depressing winter. Washington started to feel like New York for the first time since I moved there.

"I have come to bring you coffee and take you to work. Carpooling. It's good for the environment." Quinn didn't care the least bit about the environment, but she knew that wasn't why I was picking her up. She sighed and stopped packing.

"You can go without me," she said. She must have realized I wasn't even going to ask why. "I'm going to visit an aunt in Pennsylvania."

"Why didn't you tell me?" She had been so happy the days before. She seemed to finally be doing better, and now it was like she was falling back again. I really believed she was gonna stay like that. I had really hoped so, but I was afraid it wouldn't last.

"She called me yesterday evening, I didn't have time to call you. I'm sorry, I promise I'll make it up to you." That's when I knew she was lying. I could sense her voice shiver in that last sentence from thirty feet away. I was confused. We'd had dinner together after work the night before, and looking back, she was already acting a little curious than she did lately. She'd insisted on paying and bringing me home and when we kissed goodbye, she held me a lot longer than necessary, considering it was just a Thursday night and we would see each other the whole day after. I offered her to stay, or to come home with her, but she declined and walked back to her car with her head down. She left without waving or even looking out of the window.

"Can I come?" I asked, because I wasn't entirely sure if she was lying yet.

"No," she said, but it was more like a suppressed yell. She sat down on the bed, her back turned towards me. Her hand was in front of her face, but I couldn't tell why.

"Just go to work, Rach. You're gonna be late."

"Why are you lying to me?" I asked. I didn't care if I was accusing her of something she didn't do, because I couldn't even stand the idea of her lying to me. She must have had a really good reason.

But she kept quiet.

_Seven months earlier_

I was wearing the dress I'd worn to the premier party of Les Miserable a few months before. It was dark green, pretty tight and ended right above my knees. The back was all the way open, but the front was high up and the sleeves reached to my elbows. I spend two hours wondering if it was the right dress for a simple celebration in a bar I'd never been to, probably pretty casual, until I decided it was time to go.

I agreed with Quinn and Norah to meet at the end of my street, because Quinn and Norah lived right around the corner. They were neighbors, apparently. Benji lived on the other side of the city, so we'd meet him at the bar.

Quinn was wearing a red summer dress that was way too short for this time of the year, especially because her legs were bare. She wore a leather jacket to cover her arms, but she still seemed cold.

"Hey," she said, as soon as she saw me coming. I greeted her back and asked about Norah.

"She told me to go without her. She should be here by now. She's taking her boyfriend, so she'll be fine. Nice dress, by the way." She looked me in the eye as she said that and she smirked slightly.

"Thanks," I said, unable to contain a giggle.

I'd been thinking about her ever since I'd gotten home. I thought about the way I had thought she was hot when she was firing that gun. I'd thought about the way I had looked at her as she walked out in front of me, completely forgetting where I was and what I was doing. I also thought of the way she looked at me all the time and giggled when I did something she called 'silly' and I was starting to feel a little weird about it. I wasn't really sure of what was going on.

After about a minute of unsubtly inspecting each other we saw Norah and her boyfriend walk towards us. Her boyfriend was a handsome guy with blonde hair that was styled backwards, but it stood up a little. Norah had curled her brown hair and she was wearing a blue dress, but it was a lot different than mine.

"I'm Harry," her boyfriend said, sticking his hand out to shake mine.

"Rachel," I said.

"Let's go!" Quinn said and she walked ahead of us, until she pulled me next to her by my elbow, hooking her arm into mine.

We got into the bar, that was fancier than I'd expected it to be, so my dress wasn't that horrible of a decision. Quinn let go of my arm as we took our coats off and handed them to Harry, who took care of it.

"There she is!" Benji shouted while he walked towards us. Again, the entire room started applauding and I got very awkward. Apparently Benji had told the entire bar about last night's success. I wasn't even sure if it was okay for them to know, but I guess he told them some other story. No one bothered to ask about it and I was glad. People I had never seen before patted my shoulder and I got a drink pushed into my hand.

"Hey, I was there, too," Quinn tells the next person who wants to give me a drink. He gives the drink to her and she drinks it all at once. I can't hear what she's yelling over the music and the talking, but the look on her face tells me she wants me to do the same.

The last time I'd gotten drunk had been in high school. In New York I went out quite frequently, but I never had more than one or two drinks.

I hadn't even been to the bar when I finished my fifth drink and I was already starting to feel my head spin.

"Let's dance," said Quinn, who'd drunk as much as me, but seemed to be a bit more resistant to it. She took me to the dance floor, where we found Benji, Norah and Harry and some other hunters, whom I didn't really get the chance to meet yet. I knew their names, but that was it.

I let go of myself completely. I kept shouting things and I was dancing and singing to everything. Benji left and got back with two drinks a minute later and he gave one to me. I was pretty sure he'd already gotten me one, but I didn't mind.

At some point the dj made a shout out to the lovers in the bar. He played Against All Odds by Phil Collins and everyone around us just started slow dancing as if none of the careless dancing before ever happened. I remember Benji took me by my waist and I just went for it until Quinn took him away from me. She was yelling something into his ear, but I couldn't hear her. She seemed pretty mad, so I just assumed they had something going on, or at least Quinn thought they had, because I couldn't think of Benji doing something like that to someone. He yelled something back and I walked toward them, because I felt lonely with all the couples around me. Then I stumbled over someone's foot. Quinn grabbed me slightly under my waist.

"I'm gonna take you home, okay?" she said. I looked at her face from the side while we got our coats. I remember trying to tell her I wasn't that drunk.

The next thing I remember was hanging above a gutter out on the street, staring at my own vomit. I felt an arm around my waist and another holding my hair back.

"Ho shit," I heard myself mumble.

"It's okay," a husky voice said and the hand that was on my hip moved up and down slowly.

"What the hell," I said. I couldn't believe this was happening. It hadn't happened in a while.

"It's okay, just sit down. I think it's all out now." Quinn guided me onto the pavement and I almost fell sideways as I sat down, but she helped me back up.

"Wow, this is so embarrassing," I whispered.

"No, it's okay, it happens to everyone," Quinn said, while she handed me a bottle of water. I had trouble getting it open, but I was very thankful for it. "Your first hunt is a success and they buy you all these drinks. It's rude to decline, so it happens. No reason to be ashamed." It was nice of her, but I thought this was enough reason to be too ashamed to go back to work tomorrow morning. Why do people party on Thursdays anyway?

"You should go back in there, I'll be fine," I said, because I felt like she was wasting her time on me and the last thing I wanted to be was a drag to her, because that's what I had felt like all month and now it was finally starting to fade.

"No way, I'm gonna get you home safe and I'm gonna stay for the night, if that's okay." She stated it. She wasn't asking.

"Don't you have a boyfriend to go to?" I asked her. I didn't want to. It just came out. And then she started laughing. Quite hard actually, considering the fact I hadn't said anything funny.

I had known her for a month and neither of us had ever asked or said anything about a boyfriend, but I just assumed a pretty girl like her had one and I never questioned it.

"What?" I asked, getting really confused. I took it as a no, but she wouldn't stop laughing. I guess she wasn't as sober as I had thought in the first place.

"I didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"I'm gay, Rachel" she said. I felt my heart jump a little bit when she said that. And then it all came together. She way she touched me, the way she repositioned me when she taught me how to shoot, fragments from our dancing were coming back to me and I hadn't been imagining it.

I got a little nervous then. About year ago I had broken up with my ex boyfriend and it had taken me quite long to get over him. I loved him, I was pretty sure of that, but now that Quinn had mentioned it, my stomach started to get ticklish in the same way it had for Finn.

But I couldn't be gay.

I had never felt that way about a woman before and I wasn't feeling it now. I only got nervous because Quinn probably liked me and I was gonna have to reject her. I told myself that while I stared at the other side of the road blankly.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, suddenly waking up from my thoughts. "Yeah. Yeah, my dads are gay, actually."

"Oh, that's so cool," she said and she really meant it. I decided if it was indeed nothing, I could look her in the eye right then and think that again. So I tried.

The light of the orange lantern made her eyes look not golden, but copper. And it didn't matter, because it was the shape that gave her that dreamy look that made you sink into them when you looked right into them. And I forgot what I had just been thinking.

I could feel there was this tension. The kind you feel when you know that your heads are about to come closer toward each other and you already get sucked into the moment your lips touch and your entire body gets warmed up and you feel like you're glistening.

I turned my head back to the front and leaned forward. Quinn cleared her throat and got ready to stand up.

"We should go home," she said.

We got to my apartment and I handed her my key. She opened the door and I stumbled in. It was quite a nice apartment. It was modern and bigger than necessary. The bedroom was too far away for my current state of being, so I just sat down on the couch.

I remembered why I never drunk a lot. I always felt miserable right after. All I wanted to do was lay down and cry, but I didn't want to do that in front of Quinn. I kind of wanted her to leave, but I also didn't.

Quinn walked towards my kitchen as if it were her own place, even though she'd never been there before, and got me a glass of water. I had drunk the entire bottle on the way home.

"Not thirsty," I babbled and I hated that I sounded so ungrateful, but I couldn't help it.

"You have to drink as much water as you can. It helps against the hangover." I drank the water, because I didn't want to fight her over it. Fighting requires eye contact.

I drank the whole glass and put it on the table. I let myself fall into the arm rest.

"Let's get you to bed," Quinn said, while she pulled me back up.

"I know the way," I said. I didn't want her to put me into bed as if I was a sick eight year old kid. I knew exactly what was going on.

"Can I borrow a shirt?" Quinn asked when I had just entered my bedroom. I took two shirts from my wardrobe and handed her one as she was standing in the doorway.

"Thanks." I wondered where she was gonna sleep. I wasn't gonna make her lie on the couch, but it was up to her, really.

I lay down on the bed, on top of the sheets. It was always quite warm in this room and the window was too small to make up for it. And I didn't mind.

After a few minutes, Quinn walked into my room. "I used your toothbrush, if you don't mind." I didn't, but it would have been too late to object anyway. She lay down on the other side of the bed. And I lost it. I started crying and I didn't care that I was looking at her in a way I never even knew I could.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked, while she got into a position in which she could put her arms around my shoulders. I shrugged as I felt my breath stock at her touch. "Do you like me?" I asked. I didn't want to ask. I was afraid of the answer, because it would be awkward either way.

"Yes," she said softly. She gently moved her thumbs over my upper arm. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but her chin was on top of my head. By the way she was breathing I could tell she was crying too.

"What if I like you, too?" I asked.

"Then I would be a very, very lucky woman," she replied.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note: Hey guys, here's chapter 5. Things are getting real here. Please review or share or whatever.**

How did she leave? When I think about it, it seems quite logical that she couldn't take her own car. But you can't really secretly escape in a cab. She must have taken the cab home, going north first, just to mislead me, picked up someone else's car and left for someplace else. Or maybe she'd arranged a getaway car. Maybe she had a pack with Norah or Benji all along. Maybe I was the only one who wasn't allowed to know. Maybe I'm supposed to figure that out first. But if she didn't tell anyone I will only lose time.

The only question that is roaming through my mind, apart from where the hell do I go, is why. Why would she take me on her unexpected mysterious journey and then just leave without me? Why is she leaving in the first place?

I try to ignore the other thing I'm thinking about. I don't want to think it. Even to just think it is scary, because it could actually be true. _Don't blame yourself_, I keep telling myself. I didn't do anything wrong. _This is not about me_.

"I will explain, Rachel, I promise," she'd said yesterday morning, before we left.

"Explain now," I said. I was getting worried, so I sounded more mad than I had intended.

"I can't!" she yelled back. She stood up from the bed again and closed her suitcase as she continued. "I can't explain right now and I will call you later, okay? I have to go and you have to let me, because you have no idea what's going on and I can't tell you, so let me go, dammit!" I'd only heard her yell like that once before. She wasn't okay.

"Is there someone else?" I yelled back. I knew I was being stupid as soon as I'd even thought it, but I was getting really mad at her for acting like this.

"What the hell, Rachel!" She dragged the suitcase towards the door and she wanted to grab her coat now, but I grabbed her by her wrists.

"Just tell me what the hell is going on." I wasn't screaming anymore, but my face was so close to her it wouldn't have been necessary. She looked away from me as I saw another tear coming up from the corner of her eye. It fell right to the floor as she blinked.

"I love you, Rachel," she whispered.

"That's not gonna work this time," I said, though my heart still skipped a beat when she'd said it.

"I can't take you or tell you where I'm going because you will distract me and I will get you in danger and that is the last thing I want. I have to do this alone." She grabbed her coat, picked up the suitcase and opened the door. I followed her all the way to her car and got in the passenger's seat as she settled behind the wheel.

She looked at me as if she was going to punch me out through the small car window, but she didn't even say anything as she started the car and left. With me.

_ Seven months earlier_

I woke up, still in Quinn's arms.

"Good morning, sleepy," she said, her voice still raspy with sleep. I turned to look at my alarm clock. "Shit!" I said as I saw it was 10 AM and I immediately got reminded of last night.

"It's okay, I called work about an hour ago. They gave us a day of due to the success and lack of a new case. Also, they probably know what happened last night."

"Oh my God!" I yelled, as I imagined getting fired after a single month of a job I was starting to genuinely enjoy.

"Rachel, everybody gets a party like this after their first success. Not just the first in some cases. It happened to all of us, nobody cares. I'm gonna make you some pancakes." She got up and walked out the door, leaving me sitting up straight in the bed, trying to remember if anything had happened between us.

I remembered that I had felt something strong for her and I realized it was not just because I was drunk. I remembered she'd told me she was gay and my heart jumped again, because it felt kind of like a dream, but it was so obvious now. I remembered that she had admitted that she liked me and I just assumed I fell asleep in her arms right after that.

I gathered some clothes, but then I remembered we'd gotten the day off, so I didn't bother getting dressed. I walked into the kitchen where Quinn was looking for the pans. It wasn't the first time someone pointed out that leaving your pans in the highest cupboard next to the fridge is not very convenient, but my dads had always left them there and I kept the habit.

I took one and handed it to her. She gave me a strange look, but then smiled and shrugged her shoulders. I watched her as she waited for the butter to melt. She looked like she was a great cook. She already had the batter done, though I hadn't heard the mixer.

She caught me looking and I looked away, but it was no use. She laughed softly.

"Did- did anything happen last night?" I asked her. I wasn't really sure yet.

"Would you've wanted anything to happen?"

"Uhm- So no?"

"You said you thought maybe you like me," she said, looking down at the pan again, pouring the batter in now.

"Right," I said, feeling kind of guilty for making her feel insecure. "Well I, uhm, I never felt anything for a woman, so I don't know."

"Do you feel something now?" she asked. "I guess," I replied. "But I never thought I would, you know. I mean, I just- I don't know. I'm- Sorry."

"It's confusing, huh?" she laughed. I laughed with her, but it seemed I had already figured it out. It sure was confusing, but she had been through this and she didn't seem to worry at all. She just knew. I guess that's a gift you get when you have some experience. You can just tell.

"Well, there's only one way to figure it out," she said. I barely understood what she meant, but I knew what I wanted. I walked towards her. She smiled only slightly, but she put her hands on my waist and I put mine on the back of her neck. She leaned in and I pulled back a little, but as soon as our lips touched, I leaned back in.

I had either misinterpreted the idea of a good kiss, or Quinn was secretly a magical fairy that put a spell over you through her lips. One thing was for sure, I had never felt like _this_ during a kiss. My entire body was tingling and I completely forgot there was more in the universe as I laid my entire arms over her shoulders now, to get even closer to her. Her arms wrapped tightly around my waist too.

Suddenly she pulled out of the kiss. She grabbed a spatula from the counter and turned the pancake around in one smooth swipe of her wrist, but her other arm stayed on my lower back. She laid the spatula back down and I looked her in the eyes. Those golden eyes. I kissed her again. Neither of us needed to say anything. It was clear.

_Seven months later_

We'd been driving for about an hour and neither of us had said a word since we'd left. I could tell she was thinking, because she always bit her lip with her mandible sticking out when she was thinking really hard.

I didn't even realize the radio had been on until it started crack. Quinn reached her hand out to change the frequency. I reached for it and held it softly with both my hands on my lap. She bit her lip even harder and looked away from me. When she turned back I saw that she was crying again. I let her hand go after a while and she wiped her face, but it didn't help much. I wanted to ask about it, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't answer me anyway.

I was wondering where we were going, though. I tried to make up a list in my head of things that would fit the situation and the things she had said. Unless she was a double spy for some Russian assassin, I couldn't really think of anything. I felt bad that she hadn't told me, but I also knew she must have had a good reason for it.

"Are we being chased?" I asked eventually. I figured she could have made some enemies over the past few years while tracking down criminals and making sure they'd get in jail. If one of them comes out and knows who she is, it could indeed be very dangerous. By answering this question, she still wouldn't have to say anything. All she had to do was say yes or no. She kept quiet for a while, but I gave her some time to realize it wouldn't matter.

"Sort of," she said. I kept myself to my promise and didn't ask anything else. She would tell me now or she would not tell me at all. Not today, at least.

It was almost 10:30 by then and I figured we'd have to switch seats soon, since driving for two hours straight is quite exhausting. I did some calculations so keep my mind busy while I got more and more bothered by the dreadful silence that almost drowned out the radio and I noted that we would get out of Pennsylvania by 12:00. I kept looking at the roads on the navigation system and the real ones to see for how much they were similar, but I got bored pretty soon. I started humming with the music on the radio and Quinn tapped her fingers to the beat on the steering wheel. The silence seemed to disappear for a while.

Suddenly she pulled over and stopped the car right next to the highway. I wasn't sure if that was even legal, but I didn't care. She unclasped her seatbelt and for a moment I thought she would run out of the car and leave me for real. After all, that had been her plan from the start. My second thought was that we were gonna switch seats. But instead she turned her torso towards me and pulled me in. She kissed me so roughly it kind of hurt and my face was getting wet with her tears, but I gave in with all I had. She pulled my hair in big clutches and for some reason the intensity of it all made me cry too.

What she hadn't been able to say with words, she laid out for me in that kiss. She told me that she was very thankful I hadn't made her go alone by gently biting my lower lip. She explained that she was very sorry about not being able to tell me anything by flicking her tongue against mine. She told me with just a gasping sob into mouth that we were going on an adventure that was going to change our lives.


	6. Chapter 6

I reach out for my sunglasses in the dashboard and only then I notice there's a piece of paper on the passenger's seat. I almost slam the brakes, but since I'm on the highway I decide I'd better pull over first.

In Quinn's curly handwriting, the note reads: _I made a reservation on your name for a plane back to Washington. It leaves at 2pm on Springfield Airport. Don't miss it._ For a moment I just stare at the note. No '_Hey Rachel_', no '_x Quinn_' at the end and especially no '_I'm sorry_'. I feel numb. It's like Quinn has taken everything I ever felt with her, to a faraway place where I'm not welcome.

But then my emotions come back. I barely notice the first tears streaming over my cheeks and falling from my face, but once they're going good, I can't stop them anymore.

She took me all the way here. She made me think that I was coming the whole way with her. And then she left me, stranded in Illinois with her car and a note telling me I'm going back to Washington as fast as possible to sit around and worry my ass off at home. I have honestly never felt this betrayed.

"Should I take it from here?" I asked her when she'd continued the trip after our kiss on the emergency lane. We'd passed the _Welcome to Ohio_ sign a few minutes before.

"It's okay. We're taking a stop soon anyway." I was starting to get used to her vague answers and took it as a no. I glanced at the engine counter, but it was still pretty full. I assumed she must have filled it after she'd brought me home the day before. I was pretty hungry, though, so I guessed we would stop at a gas station anyway to buy some sandwiches and eat them in the car.

She took an exit that seemed quite random to me. The exit stranded on a small roundabout, which had three asphalt exits and one dirt road. Surprisingly, she took the last one.

"Where are we going?" I asked her for the first time since we'd left.

"I'm showing you one of the prettiest sights of Ohio. Believe it or not, there are some." Even though the situation we were in was rather serious, she kept her sarcasm and her sense of spontaneous surprises.

"You're familiar around here?" I asked. She turned the car around another bend and a lake got into my sight. It wasn't very big, it was more like a very big pond, but it was really beautiful. I always thought Ohio was entirely flat, but on the other side of the lake, I could see a hill filled with trees and a few houses. The lake itself was very clear and the way it reflected the sky was amazing. It was one of the prettiest things I had seen in a while. Well, except one thing, maybe.

"I grew up here," she told me. "Well, not here exactly, but this is where my dad would take me and my sister fishing on days like these."

She got off the dirt road which startled me at first, because there was no road, she just drove into the open woods. She parked the car, that seemed perfect for sceneries like these, apart from the color, between two big trees quite far away from the road.

She stepped out of the car and I did the same. We walked to the back and she reached her hand out for mine. I took it and squeezed it tighter than I ever had. We walked towards the shore. It consisted of pebbles, so I wasn't gonna take my shoes off, though the weather was perfect for bare feet.

The lake seemed almost entirely transparent, but I couldn't see very far into it because of the reflection. Quinn lead me to the right. I figured we were just gonna walk around it. The pebbles crackled softly under our feet and the tiny waves splashed to the shore on our left.

"I was born in Lima, Ohio," she said. And only then I realized how much it had bothered me that she'd never told anything about herself. Not about her past, at least. "My mother was a financial lawyer and my father was a salesman. They weren't home much. I was always alone with my sister Liv and our nanny. Except on the weekends. My mom had the Saturdays and Sundays off, but dad just had the Sundays. So every other week, he'd take me and Liv here to fish. Or at least to sit on that little peninsula over there and watch dad fish." She pointed to a little bank of pebbles we were approaching that went into the lake for about twenty feet. "He barely ever caught anything, but that wasn't what it was about." She kept quiet for a while. I heard her inhalation stock just a little before she continued. "We just liked sitting there with just the three of us. He'd ask us how our week had been. He never asked how school had been. School wasn't a topic to be discussed at his only day off, he always said. He asked us about what we did after school and what we thought about a lot.

"Liv always had a lot to tell. When she was fourteen she had a lot of friends and I guess they went to the mall and did stuff teenagers did those days. Or she talked about her new boyfriend and how amazing he was for half an hour. But she never had much to say about her thoughts. That question was directed to me, because my dad knew I barely ever went outside or dated anyone. I was eleven. I was a dreamer. I dreamed about the future and that kind of stuff. I wanted to be a superhero or something. Catch the bad guys, anyway. I think I was already pretty realistic about it back then, but no one ever took it very seriously. Except dad."

We got to the peninsula and she let go of my hand. She walked towards the end of it and set down, her feet almost touching the water. I sat down next to her.

"On the hot days he'd let us swim. May 26th 2002 was one of those days." By the exactness of that date I knew this story was going somewhere. And I got a little scared. "Dad never fished when we were swimming, so he took his book and settled on the bank while me and Liv went into the water. She was quite a great swimmer. I mean, I could swim, of course, but that was about it. She was like a mermaid or something, she just slid through the water like it was her land. And she kept daring me to come further and further away from the shore. And dad didn't stop us, because he was reading his book and if he trusted Liv that if something were to happen she'd get us out of it." She'd stopped looking at me a while ago, but then she actually turned her head away. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. She put her hand in front of her mouth, but she kept looking over the lake.

"She had a goddamn seizure. In the water. Out of nowhere. It just happened."

"I'm so sorry," I said quietly. I felt so bad for her, I had no idea what else to say to her.

"I thought she was just fucking with me at first. I thought she was faking a fucking seizure to upset me. And I asked her to stop doing that, but she was starting to sink. So I swam up to her and I tried to keep her head up and I panicked and almost drowned myself. And I called out for dad, but I was almost out of breath and I couldn't keep up much longer. And I tried to drag her to the other shore. Next thing I remember I'm standing on the shore and I'm shaking because the sun had suddenly disappeared and my dad is leaning over Liv and his clothes are all wet and he's yelling at me. And I guess he's trying to save her but it's too late. I killed her." She's staring blindly at the shore on the other side of the lake. There's tears in the corners of her eyes, but they can't seem to get out of her eyes.

"No, you didn't," I said. "She had a seizure." She laughed meaninglessly while she shook her head.

"I let her drown in my arms. I was too lazy to keep her up, because I was too scared to drown myself."

"You were eleven," I said.

"It doesn't matter how old I was. I killed my sister. I killed her. Stop trying to tell me I didn't because that's what all those people said. Except mom, that is."

"They blamed you?" I couldn't believe anyone could put such thing on the shoulders of an eleven year old girl. Not even that girl herself.

"When your child dies you need to blame it on someone. You might understand one day. I hope you won't." I realized nothing I wanted to say would be good enough. There's no way of understanding something so terrible unless you actually go through it. I am a spoiled lonely child from two joyful dads who seemed to have all the time in the world for me and gave me all I wanted. I've never lost anyone. There was no way I could understand.

The silence that followed was a million times worse than the one we'd had in the car. In the car there was nothing for me to say. Now, I wanted to say everything, I wanted to express how sorry I was. But I didn't know what, or how.

After about ten minutes, she threw her head up to the sky. I assumed she was just enjoying the sun for a moment and I decided to ask the one thing that wouldn't make me sound like I didn't understand at all.

"What happened next?"

"She got buried in Lima. My parents started treating me like I was a foreign exchange student they got stuck with for too long. I made sure they would still notice me by doing everything they didn't want me to. I ruined everything for everyone, left Ohio as soon as I graduated high school and never looked back."

"Am I the first to know about this? Aside from the people here?"

"Yes."

"Even Sarah?" I felt super selfish for asking, but I had to know.

"Yes." And then I realized what was going on. She was showing me that she trusted me. That I was really important to her. That even though she couldn't tell me what was going on right now, she trusted me with this huge ghost of her past.

She had locked her past away in a vault which only she knew the code to. She left home to make sure it would always stay in there. And in the moment I needed it the most, she had opened it up for me. Because I really am that important to her. She really doesn't want me to give up on her. She really wants me to come after her.

That's what I'm using to convince myself that all this is real. To remind myself that I really didn't make it up.

It was real. And I'm going to get it back.


	7. Chapter 7

To distract myself from the terrifying idea that Quinn may not give a damn about me at all, I started thinking about my own past about half an hour ago. I started with my childhood in Marbletown, New York. It was a small town and there wasn't much to do, but it was really pretty and my dads fell in love with the place because if its 'enchanting scenery'. They moved there half a year before they got me, because they didn't want me to be raised in New York City.

There was a preschool and a middle school there, but I went to high school in Kingston. I never had many friends, but I've always thought one is enough, as long as it's a good one. Kurt was a good one. I still call him every week. Kurt was from Marbletown too, but we weren't really friends until high school, where we were the only ones who knew each other and didn't turn into total snobs to make new friends. So we joined the musical club together and we got better and better friends every day.

There was this boy in musical club named Martin and I dated him from sophomore year until graduation. We weren't serious enough for a long distance relationship and he was going to Kingston community college to study economics and become a teacher or a banker or something and I went to Nyada with Kurt. It was all very exciting. I didn't even care about the break up. Looking back that may have been for different reasons.

Anyway, so me and Kurt went to Nyada, where he met Adam and I met Brody. Brody was more of a fling. I don't really understand what it was, but it was over pretty fast. When we broke up I think I finally started to doubt my sexuality, but I didn't take it very seriously. I thought it was just curiosity, and after a few weeks I met Finn. Finn dropped out of college because he didn't know what he wanted to do, but he stayed in New York anyway, unsuccessfully looking for a job. I have no idea why, but I fell in love with him. I really did, there was no doubt about it. I was crazy about him.

He moved in with me and Kurt pretty soon, mostly because he couldn't afford his own rent anymore. After we graduated from Nyada, Kurt moved in with Adam and Finn and I stayed in our loft. He got a job selling office supplies and I had my shows. After a few years it was starting to get boring for me. Not for him apparently, because right when I started to doubt if this was what I wanted for us, he proposed to me. It made sense. We'd been together for about six years and somehow it was like we were already married, but the word scared me. And I felt like I was suffocating. So not only did I leave him, after a while I left New York, too.

If he hadn't asked me to marry him, I may have still been in New York. Not with him, maybe, but he did make me realize that at some point in your life, nothing will ever change again. And I don't want that. I don't know why I chose to work for the FBI. Kurt made a joke about it when I told him about my issue. It made me think.

So if it wasn't for Finn, and Kurt, I would never have even met Quinn. I wouldn't have been sitting in this car, my heart aching so bad for something I might never find back.

It feels so hopeless. I have no idea where to go and what to look for. But I can't stop. I have to keep hunting Quinn down if it's the last thing I do.

_Hunting_.

The past few months I have been trained to track people down. It is my job. I was hired to do this. Quinn taught me well. I can do this. Quinn knows I can do this.

_Five months before_

"Now this, my dear Rachel," Benji said, after we got out of hunt briefing, "is a wolf."

"More like a lion," Norah added. I couldn't tell if they were happy or jealous that they didn't get picked. My heart was beating all the way up my throat and I had a hard time breathing past it. I wanted to make a snappy comeback, but I couldn't.

"Guys," Quinn said. At first I thought she was just saying it to shut them up, for my sake, but then she added: "Rachel and I are gonna turn this one into a tamed bunny." My voice squeaked against my will. I wanted to follow the other hunters back to the office, but Quinn pulled me back. "Game plan," she said. She lead me to the coffee room.

There was no one there, because everyone was working. We sat down on a soft couch and she took my hand, which was shaking like crazy. "I'll get you some water," she said, and she snorted a little when she leaned in to kiss me on the forehead and stood up.

"First of all," she said, standing by the water tank, "you're gonna do fine. I remember what it's like, the first real dangerous hunt and I would lie if I said I'm not freaking out about this one. But I've done it about five times and it's safer than it seems." She came back and gave me the cup of water. I didn't drink it.

"Why did Clayton choose us?" I asked her. She could try as hard as she wanted, there was no way to calm me down.

"He wants you to learn. But he wouldn't have chosen you if he thinks you can't do it." I wanted to tell her that I learned from the best, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't really say anything that didn't express my worry.

She laid her hand on my upper arm and looked me in the eye. "I promise you that nothing is going to happen to you. I won't let it." I hoped she understood that my own well-being wasn't my only care.

We sat there for a while, until she continued talking about what was going to happen in the upcoming weeks. "For the big hunts, we get called into briefings, like you just saw. We do that so everyone can help the chosen hunters. Everyone just went back into the office to think about a plan for us, and we will get to choose one, with Clayton. We usually pick a plan B too, but Clayton doesn't need to know about that one. So we pick a plan and then the two of us start to plan every single detail precisely to the second and centimeter. And then we just do exactly as the plan tells us to. We're gonna turn the wolf in and we'll get a week or two off to get by."

"We don't even know who this guy is! How are we supposed to find him?" I felt sorry for yelling in her face, but I couldn't help it.

"With some exact planning we will find him." She was very calm. "This is the job, Rachel. This is what it's all about. You can do this, I know you can. And you're going to do it with me. I'm never leaving your side. We're gonna make it." I couldn't help but smile a little and I took a sip of the water to hide it from her.

"You should feel the rush when you hand that bastard over to the police! Woah!" She was the one yelling now. And her enthusiasm was so genuine and cute, I could no longer hide my smile. I even laughed at her when she jumped up and stuck her hand out to pull me up. I took it and we walked back to the office.

"The guy dumps bodies in the sewer," I said, as soon as her enthusiasm had stopped.

"We're going to Florida!" She ignored my previous statement and kissed me on the cheek as her hand softly pushed me into the office on my lower back.

Once again, the entire office started applauding for us, and this time I really didn't understand why. I couldn't smile when Quinn took my hand and threw it up in the air with hers like we were the victors of a Roman war. Like we had conquered the lion already. And then I realized we had.

For these people, it was anything but a nightmare to get sent out to the battle field. It would have been a dream come true. They were here for this. And so was I. I just didn't know it yet.

Of all these guys that I had looked up at, that I had seen as the real hunters while I felt like a lousy intern, I got chosen for one of the most dangerous hunts, probably in a long time. I hadn't noticed it, but I had slowly become one of them. While I thought I was just a little kid that got taken to school with her big sister, not understanding anything taught in the classes, her sister's friends first finding her adorable, but then just very annoying, I had turned into the sister.  
I got all the lousy small hunts, thinking it was because nobody else wanted them, while really it was to prepare me for the big work. And everyone else knew all along. They respected me, though I had only worked there for two months.

I threw my other hand up in the air too and then hugged Quinn as tight as I could to let her know that I was completely in for her.

And the hunt, too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's note: Hey guys, sorry for the late update, I've been having exams. Anyway, I know it's short, but please keep the reviews coming because I love that :)**

After a few hours I almost forgot what I was doing. Not that I forgot about Quinn. She's all I can think of. Ever. But I stopped thinking a while after I'd stopped to buy a sandwich at the gas station and I was just driving, without asking myself why. I wasn't really looking out for her anymore, but I had this feeling that if I passed her, I would feel something.

I didn't get mad at myself when I came back to my senses. I had been mad long enough and I was getting really tired of it. I still kind of believe something will happen when I get closer to her. That I will get some sort of rush like I've been drinking three buckets of espresso if she gets on my path. It's probably a ridiculous thought, but I believe in it. I don't really have any other way.

The only clues I have are the vague directions the lady from the motel and Quinn herself gave me. Which would have been very helpful if they didn't both lead different ways.

On the other hand, the lady said she _saw_ her heading north. She _said _she was going west. It wouldn't be the first thing she'd lied about.

But then again, maybe she'd gone north because that was where the highway was. Maybe she was going west. And if that's so, then I have even less a chance of finding her.

I put the radio back on a while ago. It was a channel with a lot of talking, and they barely even played a song and yet they managed to pick the one song I did not want to hear.

_How can I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace.  
_

I wanted to change the channel, but I couldn't. You know when you never seem to really listen to a song until you understand what it's about. When it seems to describe your situation more perfectly than you ever could. I don't even really like Phil Collins and Against All Odds is probably one of the sappiest songs ever written. To be honest, I hate it. I hate it. Especially with all these memories stuck to it and the way too fitting lyrics. There's no way Phil Collins could understand this feeling. No one could.

Suddenly I feel like going back. The plane she'd offered me left Springfield about twenty minutes ago. The more I think about my chances of finding her, the more I regret my decision to keep following her.

I keep telling myself that she wants me to chase her, but she's made it clear several times that she really doesn't. That wouldn't stop me, but it makes me feel so stupid. I don't even know where she's going or why, and she wouldn't tell me. There's probably a whole lot more I don't know about her. And if it wasn't important I would be fine with that, but if this little secret is worth running away for, then why didn't she tell me about it?

My eyes are filled up with tears again. Maybe she just liked having me around for a while. Maybe she just really enjoyed how much I love her. Maybe I made her feel better about herself by being so fucking deeply in love with her. Maybe she just got such a rush out of it, watching me fall. Maybe she never cared about me. Maybe she just used me for some sick little game. And now the game was getting boring, so she quit. She left to play it somewhere else. Maybe that's what's going on.

And maybe I'm just making it a little more fun for her.

_Five months before_

That Monday, Quinn and I got called in one of the smaller meeting rooms, next to the office. She'd been with me the entire weekend. She took me out for dinner twice and kept telling me how proud she was that I was doing the hunt. If I still wanted to go back, I wouldn't be able to even try anymore. She'd been so sweet and she kept reassuring me everything would be okay. She told me about all the other dangerous hunts she'd done.

One time she and her previous partner went to Tennessee, where some psycho liked to take people into his house to lock them up in a very small room to see what would happen or something. No one knew for sure what he would do with them. When he was done with them, he knocked them out, by slamming a hammer on the part of their memory system in their brain, so that by the time the ambulance would come for them where he left them, they would have no idea what happened, and they'd have such a serious concussion some would probably never get back to normal. One even died.

So Quinn and Bastian, her former partner, went there and talked to the police to figure out every single detail there was to find the guy. Eventually they realized that three of the victims were Jehovah's witnesses, two were door to door salesmen or women and the other two happened to live on the same street. It was pretty vague, but Quinn and Bastian went to the street those people lived and tried every house until someone would let them in.

Quinn was their front woman, which meant she was usually the one that walked into the danger zone, while the other would try to get them out on the right time. So Quinn got asked to come in by this one guy, who seemed very normal, and then she got locked up after a while indeed.

Bastian had gone in through a window in the mean while and he called the police when he'd made sure it was safe. And by safe, he meant Quinn got out and the guy was knocked out with one of those tricks Quinn had learned me in my first week.

It didn't sound dangerous like that at all. It almost sounded boring. Quinn said I would say that after this one too.

But I was more curious about what happened with Bastian, and why he quit, because he seemed to do well.

"I'll tell you that some time," she'd said. She didn't want to scare me off, now that I'd agreed to do this thing.

"Good morning," Clayton said, folding his hands on the table and throwing each of us his little smirk in turns. He always had this look on his face that made it seem like he was so happy that he wasn't a hunter anymore and he was kind of laughing at us for it.

Two other hunters named Eric and Dean had joined us in the meeting. I was kind of wondering what they were doing there, but I figured my question would be answered soon.

"Thanks for coming, you all," he said next. He was never very formal, Clayton. Quinn said that was because he wanted the whole club to feel close, which would be hard if their chairman spoke to them as if they were complete strangers.

"You might be wondering why I brought these two fellas in," he said, directed towards me, because Quinn probably already knew. "They're coming with you. They'll watch everything you do and they will jump in there when it's necessary. Well, not everything." He smiled a little creepily and looked over from me to Quinn and back again. Quinn cleared her throat.

"You've never given me back up before," she said. I could hear she was a little let down.

"This mission is a little more dangerous, Quinn." I hoped she'd realize that the backup was for me. He trusted her. But not me. That's what I thought.

"I've had worse," she said. She was a little mad.

"Maybe you won't even need them. They're just coming with you and they will leave you to it. They will only help when it's really necessary. It's a safety measure. You should know why." By the silence that followed I could hear it was something between them. Quinn understood. The silence seemed to bother even Eric and Dean. I was just starting to get worried when Quinn continued.

"So, the plan."

"Yes! The plan," Clayton said. He leaned over the paperwork in front of him. "Outstanding plan, ladies!" The plan was pretty simple, exactly like the ones we'd performed a few times before. Quinn and I would go to Florida (we'd picked our own fancy hotel, the company would pay for it) and Quinn would turn herself into wolf's target, which was a young, illegal prostitute this time, sort of. That part made me feel very uncomfortable, but Quinn had assured me nothing would happen, and she would be safe, as long as I did my part of the job. I had to follow them in our rented car, which would serve as our escape car later on. Then I would break into where ever he would take her and call the police if there was enough evidence he was the one we were looking for.

How would we know if he was the one we were looking for?

We wouldn't. We could be chasing down a different wrong guy every day for weeks. All we knew was that the other girls usually went missing on Thursday nights.

How did Quinn convince me that was the safest way?

She didn't. The problem was that there was no other way.

Our plane would leave in a week. I think I was terrified before. I must have been. There were about a million things that could go wrong, and though not all of them were my responsibility, I was freaking out. I felt like I wasn't experienced enough. I hated Clayton for picking us.

But mostly I hated him for picking her. Or actually I hated her, for being so insistent on being the bait. I had offered it many times, but she wouldn't let me. Not because I was not experienced enough, but because she didn't want anything to happen to me. She said it would be too hard for me. She pointed out it wasn't an offense or anything, she was just being protective. She pretended it didn't occur to her that maybe I wanted to be protective over her too. Like it was any easier for me to watch her go at it.

Maybe Norah and Benji were right when they said dating your partner from work in real life didn't make you any stronger as a team. It only made you weaker.


	9. Chapter 9

It's starting to get dark and even though I don't feel like eating, I'm getting hungry. I decided to turn my mind on standby again a while ago, because I was scared I would give up. So I decide it's time for some McDonalds around nine. I order a McSalad in the drive thru because I don't feel like facing people or have any form of social interaction and I park my car in the parking lot to eat it.

I don't even like McDonalds. You can taste how unhealthy it is and you can feel yourself getting stuffed with every bite, like the food blows up as soon as you swallow it. Even the salads are crap.

I eat half the salad and put the rest back into the bag. I take out my phone, just to check, and see that I have five missed calls. One is from Benji. Four are from four different unknown numbers.

How could I not have noticed she was calling me four times? How could I be so stupid to not even check my phone every once in a while? Why the hell was my phone on silent? I remember putting the sound off yesterday, when Benji called me while Quinn and I were busy. How could I forget to turn it back on?

I try to tell myself that these might not be her calls. But who else could it be? Four strangers dialing the same wrong number on one day? I feel like throwing my phone out of the car window and driving over it, but that wouldn't help me. Maybe she'll call again.

I look at the times she called. The first was at 2:10. Probably to check if I had gotten the airplane. The next was at 2:16. The third was at 16:00 and the last one had only been about an hour ago. I feel like screaming. I want to kick over some of the garbage cans on the parking lot.

"Fuck!" I yell. I scream it again and again. I'm slamming on the steering wheel and I don't even care I'm honking the horn while I'm going it. After a while I lay my head to rest on top of the steering wheel and I softly bump my forehead against it a few times.

Then I grab my phone back from the dashboard and I call back the last number she called me from. It only rings about two times.

"Hello?" a voice on the other line says. It sounds like a teenage boy from what I can tell.

"Uhm, hi," I say. My voice is a little cracky, because except for the McDrive order and the screaming I hadn't used my voice for almost a day. "Did uhm, did you lend your phone to somebody about an hour ago?"

"Yeah, I did." He doesn't say anything more.

"Blonde? Not very tall? Extremely pretty?"

"Pretty hot, yeah." I damn the kid for being so calm and indifferent. I also feel like yelling at him for calling my girlfriend hot, as if that is all she is, but maybe I'm just mad at him because he saw her an hour ago and I didn't.

"Did she say why she wanted to call me?"

"No. She just kind of snatched my phone out of my hand." I imagined Quinn taking this random kid's phone and him getting all upset. It's funny, but I can't laugh.

"Where were you when that happened?"

"At McDonalds." I swear to God my heart just fell out of my chest. I cough, like I always do when I get sudden excitement over something, because I feel like I'm choking, but then I realize this McDonalds is not the only McDonalds in the country.

"What McDonalds?"

"The one at main station."

"No, I mean where, what city, what state, what fucking country, come on!" I didn't want to yell at him, but it just happened.

"Woah, chill," he said, partly to buy himself time to think of where the hell he was. "Casper, Wyoming."

"Thanks," I said. Wyoming. She was headed west. And I was only one state apart from her. "Did she tell you where she was going next?"

"No, man, she just threw my phone back at me and left the building." I don't feel like hanging up just yet. This kid had seen her and he could tell me more about her current state.

"What did she look like?" I asked him.

"I told you, hot." I may have slapped him if we were talking face to face.

"Did she seem happy or sad or scared or what?"  
"I don't know, man, she was wearing sunglasses and all. She didn't seem too nice, though." I want to tell him nice is not an emotion, but it would be a waste of time.

"Was she crying or anything?"

"I couldn't see her eyes. She was yelling at my phone, though, when you didn't pick up."

"What did she yell?" I asked him.

"Like 'pick the fuck up' and 'come on' and 'please'."

"Thanks," I tell the kid and I hang up. I mean it. He's given me quite an exact location and though she must be far into Wyoming by now, I finally found my directions. I finally found a way to keep the trip a little easier. An exact location and the knowledge that she wanted me to pick up the phone, because she wanted to talk and she probably wanted to make sure I was still chasing her.

_Four months before_

It wasn't a long flight from Washington to Miami. Quinn and I sat next to each other, and Dean and Eric were sitting behind us.

I had never been in Florida before, my dads always took me to California in the summer when I was a kid and when I moved out I took my holidays in the beachless states. Arizona was my favorite, because you could drive around for hours without really going anywhere. You'd move, but you barely even noticed. I guess I just liked how nothing changed, even though you were driving over 80 miles an hour.

Quinn told me that she used to go to Florida every Christmas when she was a kid, because her grandmother lived there. She knew Miami like she knew Washington, because she would always go there when her parents excused her from being with the family and all that.

The plane landed at nine in the morning. It was a sunny day, but I guess it's always sunny in Miami. Quinn took of her cardigan as soon as we got outside and I regretted putting on my travel sweater, which was a thick grey 'I love NY' hoodie.

We went to the hotel immediately, so we could dump our bags and change before we went into the city. The hotel was rated with four stars and even though I was used to some luxury in New York, I didn't understand how it didn't get five. It had a door man and the lobby was super fancy. It was a very modern hotel and apparently the three rooms we had reserved each had a spa for a bath and a minibar. The guys went to their room, which was in the same hall as ours, but on the other side, right across the hall from us, and we went to ours.

I dropped my bags on the floor as soon as I entered and looked around. "Oh my God," I said. Quinn just laughed and looked at me looking around. The room was quite big and seemed even bigger with the windows in the back, that filled up the entire wall. I walked towards it, passing the big white bent couch on the white carpet. The view was stunning, with the city to the left and the ocean to the right.

Quinn wrapped her arms around my stomach from behind and put her chin on my shoulder.

"Quite gorgeous, huh?" she said, softly.

"Yes, it's amazing."

"I knew you'd love it," she whispered, lifting her chin to get her lips closer to my ear. She softly bit my earlobe and then traced her tongue down to my neck. I shivered and bowed my head to the other side to give her space.

"You've been here before?" I asked, my voice soft and quivering.

"Yeah. It's the coolest hotel in Miami." Her voice tickled against the sensitive skin of my neck. She put her lips on my neck and parted them to let her tongue through. I took her arms with my hands and closed my eyes as I felt her teeth searching for a piece of skin they could gently clench into.

"By yourself?" I asked, to act like I still had some sort of control over myself.

"No," she husked, barely taking her lips from my neck. She continued biting me softly as she kept ignoring my unasked question. I suppressed a moan and loosened her arms to turn around. I pulled her in by the back of her neck and roamed my hands through her hair while we kissed. We were just shuffling towards the couch without ever breaking the kiss when we heard a knock on the door. Quinn's hands went from my waist to my neck in two seconds and she pulled my face backwards. She smiled as she turned around and walked towards the door. I turned back to the window and sat on the back of the couch, trying to get back to my senses a little.

"Well, we've made it this far," I heard Eric's voice saying. "What's next?"

"There's no work to be done until tomorrow evening," Quinn said. I could hear she was slightly annoyed. "I think we have prepared enough back home, so do whatever you want."

"Do you guys wanna go into the city with us?" I could hear by the hurry he'd said it in that Quinn had wanted to throw the door closed into his face.

"Oh, you can go. We're gonna unpack our bags first. We'll call you if we're joining you." This time she actually closed the door without even saying bye.

"Are we joining them?" I asked, throwing her a smirk over my shoulder.

"I said 'if'." I laughed. She came back to me and kissed me, but I wouldn't let her for long.

"Who were you here with?" I asked her. It wasn't really important. It didn't matter at all. She had a life before I entered it. I just wanted to know.

"Are you jealous?" Her left eyebrow twitched upward as she smirked at me.

"Oh, I am _so_ jealous," I teased her back, although I partly meant it. I hated to get like this, but I couldn't help it. I am a jealous person. I get insecure a lot.

"Really," she taunted. I started to get frustrated with her teasing.

"Is she pretty?" I stopped pretending I liked it.

"Rach," she said, a little concerned. She put her hand on the side of my face. "Not as pretty as you."

"What's her name?"  
"I used to think your eyes were brown." I wasn't only confused because she'd changed the subject so quickly, but also because she was sort of denying my eye color. I was pretty sure my eyes were brown and mine didn't change to gold in the sunlight, like hers.

"What the hell?"

"Green suits you." I sighed and tried to look mad, but I had to admit the way she was laughing at her own joke was irresistibly adorable.


	10. Chapter 10

My mood is starting to lighten up the closer I get to Casper, Wyoming. I'm less tense and upset than I was when I was driving around cluelessly. I'm still a little nervous, though, but I guess it's more of excitement now.

I hear my phone ringing. I decide to pull over before I crash myself into something and I almost drop my phone out of excitement. My heart has already calmed down when I pick up, because the screen hadn't showed her picture, but my dads'.

"Hi," I say, starting excited and ending disappointed as hell.

"Rachel, dear!" one of my dads yell through the phone.

"Dad, now is not a good-"

"Guess what!" he says, even more enthusiastic. "Your dad and I got a puppy!" I feel like throwing my phone out of the window.

"That's great, dad," I say, because I don't want to upset him, and I especially don't want him to hear something is wrong. I can't bare to get the words 'What kind of dog is it?' over my lips.

"Are you and Quinn free tomorrow?"

"I'm afraid we're not," I sigh.

"What's the plan?"

"We're… going to an exhibition in Washington."

"Oh, well, have fun. Anyway, drop by whenever you got a minute. Donna is the cutest little Labrador ever!" A Labrador. Like Marnie, the dog we used to have when I was little.I would love to keep chatting about my dads' newest 'addition to the family' at any other time in my life.

"I have to go," I say. "Show's about to start." My dads' kind of expected me to go to some theater show in town every week, which I usually did, but when work got tougher, Quinn and I enjoyed a lazy night on the couch on our free weekends much more.

Dad is still saying his goodbyes when I hang up without saying anything.

My dads love Quinn. I remember the first time they met her. I had called them a week before and I had no idea how they would respond when I'd tell them I had met someone special who was not a guy. They were surprised, but they seemed to be glad they wouldn't have to kick any boy's ass if he'd hurt me. And they laughed at how gay our family would be. And I wasn't planning on meeting them the week after, but they insisted.

We decided to make it a road trip, leaving on a Thursday to come back on a Monday. We could easily get some days of, those were the perks of a physically and mentally challenging job and being working-partners with the same person as your life-partner.

Quinn was the most charming daughter in law they could have imagined. She was sweet, interested and helpful. She cooked for them and showed us her piano skills, which was a surprise to me too. And I fell more and more in love with her as my dads threw each other looks, telling each other with only their eyes that they were so happy she was there.

And when we left, my dads embraced me in our traditional group hug, and almost in sync, they whispered: "Don't you let this girl go."

_Four months earlier_

Quinn and I went out of our hotel room when it was lunch time and we called Eric to meet him and Dean at a place called Little Haiti. We ate sushi there and then we went back into the city and wandered around for a while, eating ice cream and pretending to be teenagers on a school trip, until Quinn asked me if I wanted to go to the beach. The guys understood we wanted to go alone and we left them at a clothing store.

She told me about her grandmother and their annual trips here. I kept quiet. Partly because I was listening and I had nothing to say. Also because I was nervous for tomorrow. Plus I was kind of upset that she wouldn't tell me about the girl she took to the same hotel before me. She was out of things to tell me and she was a little annoyed that I only replied with minimal nodding and soft giggles at the right times, so she stopped talking.

"Her name was Sarah," she said after a while. I could see the beach at the end of the street now. "We broke up two years ago."

"What happened?" I asked.

"I don't really want to talk about it," she said. I was glad she had answered my question, but I was hoping for more. I was getting pieces of her story one by one. "It's nothing. Like, she didn't die or anything, I just don't like to talk about it."

"It's okay," I said. But it wasn't okay. I felt like she didn't trust me enough to tell me about her ex. They broke up two years ago, so I didn't understand how bad it could be.

We stayed quiet until we reached the beach. She immediately let go of my hand to take of her shoes and I followed her lead. As soon as I got back up she grabbed me by my waist and kissed me before letting go of me and said, "Last one who reaches the water is doing the dishes tonight." And then she ran. We were both wearing summer dresses and her red one made her look like she was flying as she ran towards the water. She was still in a much better shape than me and even though the ocean was barely a hundred feet away, she got there first. I gasped as my feet touched the water, which was colder than I'd expected it to be.

We stayed at the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Then she took me to a quite fancy restaurant on the beach. She ate a stake and I had a salad and after desert, ice cream combined with a beach walk and hand holding, we went back to the hotel. Neither of us had to do the dishes after all.

We threw our purses on the couch and looked at each other shortly before a tight embrace with a kiss. I pulled the right straps of her bra and her dress aside and started kissing the skin that had been hidden underneath them all day. She had one arm around my waist and the other tugging on my hair, her fingers completely entangled in it. I moved my lips toward her neck as I helped her to get her arm out of the dress. She freed the other arm herself and she pulled my face back up so she could kiss me again. Then I noticed she was crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked. She shook her head, her eyes closed to blow the question away and she kissed me. I wanted to pull away and ask her about it, but I had been around her long enough to know that she wouldn't answer me anyway. Her arms squeezed me so tight I felt like I might have choked, but I let her.

She stopped the kiss and put her chin on my shoulder as a sob escaped her mouth.

"Are you nervous for tomorrow?" I asked her.

"A little," she whispered. I realized this was the first time she admitted to be nervous about the hunt. About anything, really. I felt her tears dripping on my shoulder and felt her bare stomach against my dress as she breathed out with a quiver.

"I can't do this," she then said. Her voice had changed from a vulnerable whisper to a strong confident statement and I was a little startled. I had no idea what she meant. Or actually, I had several ideas of what she meant and neither could be good.

"You've done it before, it's going to be fine," I assured her, assuming we were talking about the hunt. Usually she was the one telling me to calm down, that it was going to be okay. But I felt her shaking her head and I knew she was talking about what I feared she was.

"No," I said and I wanted to let go of her, but she was still squeezing my waist. "No, you can't do this, Quinn."

"I'm so sorry," she said, her hands clamping at my dress.

"No," I was almost yelling now and I took her arms to pull them off of me. "You can't do this! Not now! What about the hunt?"

"We're still gonna do the hunt," she replied. "But after-"

"No, Quinn!" I didn't care what she had to say. "You dragged me into this! You wanted this! _You_ don't get to break up with me, Quinn!"

"Excuse me?" Dean and Eric must have been able to hear us from across the hall. As for the rest of the hotel, probably. "I _dragged _you into this? _I_ wanted this?"

"No, that's not what I meant!" I had regretted the words as soon as I'd said them and I knew I was wrong, but I yelled it like she had completely misunderstood.

"You're saying you never would have fallen for me if I hadn't been the one making the moves," she said, but she wasn't screaming.

"No, that's not what I meant! You can't break up with me after all you made for us, Quinn. And you can't do this now."

"You don't understand." She walked towards the couch, sat down and buried her face in her hands

"If you break up with me I can't work with you anymore."

"You won't have to, after this hunt."

"No, Quinn, please." I was begging. We'd had such a great day. If she had been planning on this she might have waited until after the hunt. But I knew she hadn't. She couldn't have. So I had no idea what happened between the moment she paid the restaurant check to when I took off her dress. It had happened so suddenly, I couldn't have felt more confused.

"You don't understand," she said again.

"So explain it to me!" I didn't mean to yell so much as beg, but I sounded more angry than upset.

"I can't," she said. I wanted to walk out of the room, take the elevator downstairs and leave the hotel, but I also didn't want that. I sort of wanted to slap her across the face, but I couldn't. I wanted to yell at her some more, but I didn't know what to say. Most of all I wanted to cry and it seemed like the only possible thing to do. So I stood there and I cried as I looked out of the window. Miami was stunning by night. It was different than New York or Washington. There wasn't as much light from the buildings and the street, but the sky was still a half dark shade of blue, even though it was way past midnight. I would have enjoyed it so much.

"I love you," I said. I still didn't look at her. I heard her quiver as she exhaled and she was still crying. "I fucking love you." I saw her from the corner of my eyes. She ran her hands up her hair and squeezed, her elbows still in her lap. I wanted to ask her so much. And I hated her so much because I knew she wouldn't answer me, because she never did. She never answered my goddamn questions. And I hated her for it. I hated her as much as I loved her.

I made up my mind and turned around, heading for the bedroom. I closed the door behind me and locked it. I went to bed like nothing was going on and tried to go to sleep so I would wake up to the sound of the door being punched out of its hinges. Instead I ended up sitting on the floor with my ear pushed against the door, listening closely to find out what she would do. But I didn't hear her. I suppose she just lied down on the couch for the rest of the night and I fell asleep on the ground, soaking the carpet with tears, hating the way she treated me, and the way I treated her.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: Hey guys, thanks for holding on this far. I promise you she will find Quinn soon. I'm so sorry for the other drama that is yet to come. Anyway, enjoy. And review if you want to. Please. **

I drive into Casper, Wyoming at eleven at night. I forgot about Benji's call until he called again an hour ago and I picked up while driving.

"Where the hell have you been?" he asked. He seemed pretty frustrated. We had been gone for two days without telling anybody where we were headed, including ourselves. I took some time to figure what I was going to tell him. I decide to tell him some form of the truth.

"We're on a road trip." I managed to keep my voice normal, because the confusion and frustration have been compromised by the enthusiasm of being so near to her I could feel it.

"And you didn't bother to tell anyone that? Like, at least your boss?"

"It was kind of a spontaneous thing," I said, hoping he wouldn't get into it too much. "Why are you calling me anyway?"

"Because I was worried," he said. And of course he was.

"I remember giving you some space. You have all the space you need. Don't worry about me and move on, okay?" I didn't mean to sound so rude and I honestly didn't mean it like that, but he was getting on my nerves and I didn't really want to talk to him.

"_You _are telling _me _to move on. That's funny." I honestly didn't see how that was funny. I wasn't the one hitting on him ever since meeting him.

"Listen, Benji, Quinn and I are about to stop and see if we can find a motel or something, so I'm sorry, but-"

"Yeah, I get it. Glad to know you're okay. Bye." He hung up before I could say anything.

I take the exit to Casper central and find my way to the main station. I park my car on the parking lot next to it and walk into the building. The thought of her being in the same building less than three hours ago excites me. Though it's only been one day without her, it feels like I've been driving after her for weeks. But right now she feels so close to me, I feel like I might be with her again in an hour.

But I won't. Because first I have to figure out which train left around eight and then I have to go to wherever that train went and even then the chance of finding her is so small I start to worry I might never find her again. I put that thought out of my head and make my way to the platform. I keep my phone in my hand the entire time, hoping she might call me. I keep looking around to see if maybe she stayed here, but it seems too unlikely to look intensively.

I get on the platform and look for a train schedule. There's one right ahead of me and I pray it hasn't deleted the trains from three hours ago. I bump into at least five people as I hurry to the schedule. I sigh loudly in relief when I see it has the trains from 6am this morning to the ones arriving and leaving until 5am tomorrow.  
I look at my phone to see she called at 7:56. McDonalds was the last store I passed before entering the platform. According to the kid she seemed quite hurried.

_7:58 Riverton, Wyoming, platform 6  
8:01 Wilson, Wyoming, platform 4  
8:03 Jackson, Wyoming, platform 7  
_

This entire day has been about being lucky. But at this point it felt so tricky to guess which train she had taken, if she had even taken one. I look up to see at which platform I am, since this one is the closest to McDonalds. 6. Riverton.

I keep Wilson and Jackson in mind, but decide to go for Riverton. I hurry back to my car and try to calculate at what time she could have arrived there, but I have no idea how far Casper and Riverton are apart. So I type it into the navigator. Two hours. If she arrived in Riverton an hour ago, I assume she must have stopped there, to find a place to stay for the night. And in that case, I have a very, very big chance of finding her.

_Four months earlier_

I woke up the next morning, shocked at first, that I was lying on the floor of an unfamiliar room. Then everything that happened the day before came back to me. I stood up and turned around to see the door was still in its hinges. I didn't even dress myself before taking it off the lock and slowly opening it. I turned my head around the corner to see she was not lying on the couch.

I walked towards the kitchen area, expecting to find her baking pancakes in the same red dress she had worn the day before. I imagined her turning around with a spatula in her hand, smiling at me with her golden eyes in the Miami morning sun, like the morning after she first told me she liked me. But she wasn't there.

I walked back to the living area. The couch was still a bit messy, but there was no trace of her. I found my purse on the table next to the couch. I grabbed it and reached for my phone, determined to call her. But when I clicked the on-button to make the screen light up, I saw she already texted me.

_Meet me at Coral Bagels at 8:30. 2750 SW 26__th__ Ave. x Quinn  
_

I smiled at the text. It still felt the same as it would have two days before. She never started her texts with things like 'hey babe' or even 'hey Rachel', she always got straight to the point and there was always one 'x'.

It was 8:15 when I dressed myself into a plain white t-shirt and black jeans, grabbed my purse and walked out the door. I almost made my way down the hall to the elevator when a door opened and someone called my name. I turned around to see Dean standing in the middle of the hallway, next to the door of their room.

"Good morning," I said. I wanted to leave as fast as possible, because I didn't really know where the bagel place was and Quinn was probably already there. I wanted to turn back around and just walk away, but Dean wasn't done with me.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked. I realized I must have looked terrible, I had been crying all night and I hadn't even looked in the mirror yet.

"I'm fine," I said. I didn't turn around, but I did press the elevator button behind me.

"We should probably stay together today," he stated. And he was right, but I couldn't care less.

"Yeah, I'm meeting Quinn for breakfast and we'll be back later." I threw him a fake smile and hated the elevator for being so damn slow.

"Are the two of you okay?" I remembered our yelling from the night before and wondered if they had really heard us. Luckily the elevator arrived right in my answering time.

"Sorry, Dean," I said while turning around and stepping into a, fortunately empty, elevator. "I'll catch you later!" I smiled at him before the doors closed.

I bit my lip trying not to cry and I hated the elevator for not having some stupid tune playing, so all I could hear were Quinn's words replaying in my head. I tried to ignore it as the elevator arrived in the lobby and I left the hotel, avoiding as much eye contact as possible. I followed my common sense to 26th avenue and started looking for a place called Coral Bagels. I wondered what she wanted to discuss. If she was gonna say she was sorry, or make it even worse. I had no idea what to expect. With Quinn, I could never be sure.

I found Coral Bagels near the end of the street and I saw a blonde in a red dress sitting with her back turned to the window. I walked in and sat down in the chair across from her.

"Hey," we said. We smiled at each other, but neither of us spoke until the waitress left with my order.

"Rachel, I'm…" She held her tongue for a while and she looked around. We were sitting in a corner and there were no tables close to us, but except from the two teenagers sitting on the other side of the room and the waitress there was no one else around. "I'm sorry." Those words could have meant everything.

"Me too," I said.

"I shouldn't have brought it up right then, but I just lost it, I guess and I'm sorry. I shouldn't even have taken you to that hotel because I knew it would be too much for me, but I just really hoped it wouldn't be." She swallowed thickly and I saw her eyes watering up again.

"What happened?"

"I-" She paused and took a deep breath when the waitress came back with my chocolate bagel. She was having a hard time talking about it. "I have been through things in the past. I was pretty broken before I found out I preferred girls over guys, but yet I never found the right person to make me feel alright. Until I met Sarah. She fixed me. And then she broke me again. And it was much worse than before. And I just really hoped I would be over it after two years. But apparently I'm not."

I took her hand that was lying on the table. I was relieved when she responded to it with gentle strokes of her thumb against my palm.

"What did she do?" I knew this was not the most important question after all she had just told me, but I needed to know and she wasn't going to tell me everything all at once.

"She cheated. It was no big deal, really."

"No big deal?" She was trying to seem all tough again. I hoped one day she would realize that she didn't have to. I didn't need her to be all strong and tough. I needed her to be herself for me.

"People get cheated on every day. It wasn't any different with her."

"It doesn't matter what it's like for other people. It matters what it was like for you." She closed her eyes and started staring at the wall next to me instead of my eyes.

"People get hurt and they get over it. That's how it works. You don't stay in the same miserable state for two years and you move on when you meet a way more perfect woman and you get happy with her and forget about the past. That's how it's supposed to work." She sounds angry as she says it. She almost hisses it.

"Not for everyone," I said. I wanted to tell her it was okay, but I knew what that meant. I wanted to be there for her, but I couldn't. She switched our hands, laying hers on top of mine and squeezing it tight.

"You know this is not about you," she whispered. I shook my head and I felt tears coming up again. "I love you." I squeezed her hand back. It was like everything around us froze, like nothing else existed. And I wished I could stop the time, too, because I really didn't want her to say what she was going to say next. I just wanted to feel her fingers tight around mine and look into her golden eyes for the rest of forever and I would have given anything to not hear her say what would follow.

"But I can't be with you in the way you need me to. I can't love you the way I'm supposed to, no matter how hard I'd try. And I am so sorry that I made us happen when I knew I couldn't do it. You deserve so much more than what I can give you."

I think I just kept shaking my head for a while. I wasn't sure what I was feeling in that moment. When I came back to my senses I didn't feel sad so much as angry. I wanted to say that she might think she was being all generous by giving me freedom and that she was doing this to make me happy, but she didn't get to take this away from me. She had no right. How could she know what I needed from her? Is there a standard _way_ to love somebody and is it wrong to do it differently? And who was she to determine what _I_ deserved?

"I will give you all the time you need," I said, ignoring the annoying tear that wouldn't fall off my chin. She opened her mouth to say something, but she knew I wasn't going to let her. "We're going to a different hotel right now and we can do the hunt whenever you want." She slowly nodded and swallowed, bowing her head down. When it came back up, she pulled her face back to normal and said, "We're still doing it tonight."


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's note: The particular part in this chapter y'all probably came here for was very, very hard for me to write. That's why it came so late and why it's the only dirty scene. But I like how it turned out. I hope you do too. I guess this is the chapter I have been writing the whole thing for and it's a lot different than I had imagined at first, but it's okay. Please let me know what you think.**

It was a late spring night and the wind stroked gently against our arms as we walked from her car over to the restaurant. Quinn was wearing a light blue button down shirt and black skinny jeans and I wore a short green dress, and I had worried whether it wasn't too much for the occasion. But as soon as I had opened the door and saw the look on Quinn's face, I knew it wasn't. I offered her to come in and have some of the red wine my dads had brought in as a house warming present. So she entered my apartment and sat on the couch where we had sat together a few days before. She didn't do anything that made me feel uncomfortable, since I was a little nervous for my first date in ages, my first date ever with a woman. We just sat on the couch and drank the wine, which tasted better than I had expected, and we talked and laughed until it was time to go. It didn't feel fake or awkward once.

She had made a reservation at quite a fancy restaurant in the middle of Washington. It was called Agora and Quinn said it was known for their great vegetarian dishes. I was flustered she remembered about my eating habits, since my ex-boyfriends all tended to forget until we had been together for at least a year.

We stepped into the restaurant, which was pretty fancy and the menu turned out to be even fancier. After the first dish, I laid my hand out on the table and she took it in hers softly, her other hand still holding her wine glass. She smiled with half her mouth and all of her eyes. She squeezed my hand gently and a wave of excitement went through me. The candle on the table made her eyes seem to glow. And as the sight of her face across from me made my breath stock, I knew it was right. I had never fallen in love that fast.

We immediately asked for the check after desert. Quinn paid and I started to realize that I loved everything she did. Every move she made and everything she said made me feel as if I had never seen or heard anything more perfect. Sometimes I giggled under my breath and I was amazed by how not adult-like that was. I felt like I was 16 again, except I felt so much more than I did back then. The restaurant seemed to vanish behind me as she pulled me in and kissed me before we could even get to the car. She was giggling too as we got into the car and went to my place again, her fingers tangled in mine as she drove, only letting go to change the radio channel. "If there's one thing I can't stand it's a cracking radio channel," she said, and grabbed my hand back as soon as she found a good, smooth frequency.

We stumbled into my apartment, never letting go of each other. Her arms were clamped around my waist and mine were tied around her shoulders. Our lips never stopped touching as we made our way over to the couch. I opened my eyes just once, to see that hers were closed and I loved the way her lashes looked as they lay still against her skin of her oh so flattering cheek bones, and her hair, of which a few wisps had let go at the front, so they were hanging between our faces. I loved the way her skin felt under my arms, and the way her arms felt around mine. I loved the way she treated me, like I was worth all of her time. Like I was worth all of her. Most of all, I just loved her. And I felt my stomach tickle more and more as we crashed on the couch together.

Against my own expectations, it was me who started unbuttoning her shirt. She was sitting with her back against the armrest and my knees were spread to her sides. I finished unbuttoning her shirt while she loosened her grip on my waist and moved her hands down slowly, getting to the end of my dress. She pulled it up and I sat up to help her getting it off. She did the same for her shirt and I pulled her face back in to kiss me. Her hand slid from my neck back to my waist, shortly covering my breast. I felt it getting comfortably warm between my legs.

I started kissing her neck, while my right hand went down on her stomach. It stuck around there for a while, because I was amazed by how hard her stomach was. Hard, in a sort of soft way. I knew she was strong, but I had never imagined her abs would feel like this. When a soft moan escaped from her lips, as a response to my lips softly sucking on her neck, my hand moved on downward and I heard her shoes falling to the ground behind me. I unbuttoned the three buttons of her jeans and sat up to free her legs from the rigid fabric. When the jeans were on the ground too, she pulled me so close to her, I had to drop my knees down to hers. My breasts pressed against hers and she moved her hands up to unclasp my bra.

I remembered the first time someone else had ever taken my bra off and how uncomfortable it had felt. Being naked was sort of a big deal for me and it had cost me some great roles on Broadway. Even all the times after the first time, I was never completely okay with being naked around someone, no matter how much I loved them, or how much they loved me.

But this time, it felt completely different. It was like Quinn already knew me that way. Like my body was really hers, too, and that it was nothing new to her. I knew she would never treat me different after coming this close to me. I felt it in the way she kissed me, since the very first time, that she loved me, and I had no reason to be insecure. Plus, I was the one who sort of started it all.

I started taking the straps of her bra off her shoulders. They left a red mark in her skin and I kissed the entire line, hoping it hadn't hurt too much. She moaned again, and I couldn't help but laugh a little, because I knew I was being nervous for no reason. She pushed herself up so she sat up straight. I figured she did it to help me take off the rest of her bra. I did so and we stopped kissing. She moved herself so she sat on her knees, too. We looked each other in the eye and we just stayed quiet for a while. She put her fingers in my hair and stroked the side of my face. Almost without a sound, she whispered, "I love you," and she caught my lips again before I could even say it back. She cupped my breasts with her hands and I had to interrupt the kiss to let out a soft, moaning gasp. I had never been this intimate with anyone. She used the occasion to bow her head down.

She pulled me up a little as she started kissing my breasts with soft wet pecks. I wrapped my fingers in her hair. Without even realizing it, I had started panting slowly. Quinn touched my left nipple and I felt another tickle in my lower stomach. I grabbed the back of her neck with her hair still tangled around my fingers and I cared less about hurting her. I could tell by the way she flicked her tongue at my nipple that she was enjoying it. Her hands stopped moving up and down my hips and she put them on my thighs, stroking them in circles with her thumb as she lifted her head to kiss me again. She sat up straighter and pushed me down until I was lying on my back. She never stopped sucking on my lower lip softly as her hands crept higher up my thighs. A shiver went up my spine when her fingers met my black lace panties. She started to stroke softly where I needed it the most. I let go of her lips to let out a moan. This time, Quinn moaned too, and she started grinding her hot panties against my leg. I opened my eyes to look at her.

The way her hips moved over my stomach, her husky voice moaning into my ear, the feeling of her wetness against my leg and her fingers on the right spot got me over the edge. It lasted longer than it ever had and it felt better than ever. And it didn't take Quinn much longer after me. She got her hand back from between my legs and stroked me across the stomach. She put her arm around my neck and I put mine around her waist. And she lied down on top of me, half naked, her breasts pressing against mine. Her face was buried in my neck and she was still panting. And so was I. And we hugged for a long time.  
"I love you too," I whispered. I felt her giggle into my neck. And she kissed my neck before we fell asleep right there on the couch.

_Seven months later_

While driving to Riverton, I put my phone on its loudest and vibrating mode and lay it on top of the dashboard. I turn the radio off so I will definitely hear it when some strange number calls. When the silence of the car's noise is starting to disturb me, I start ticking my fingers on the wheel and singing a random song that pops up in my head.

I managed to block out every other feeling but excitement when I left Casper and I'm doing pretty good so far. I'm starting to imagine what will happen when I see her. What will happen when she sees me. I don't think she'll be angry, she'll be relieved. She'll be glad that I didn't give up on her. Why else would she have called me so many times?

I can't even feel upset that I'm losing time when I have to stop at a gas station to refuel. I walk into the gas store and buy two chocolate bars when I pay. And as I walk back to my car, I feel my phone ringing. I almost drop the bars and get my phone out of my pocket at fast as I can. It's an unknown number.

"Hello?"

"Rachel?" It's her voice. I start breathing loudly and I can't hold back my tears.

"Quinn!"

"Hey," her husky voice says. After all this, all she says is 'hey'.

"Where the fuck are you?" I yell. I thought once I'd get to talk to her again, I'd be relieved. But I have never been this angry in my life.

"I'm so sorry, Rachel," she says. "I hope you're all right."

"Where the fuck are you?" I ask again, but more calmly this time. I sob into the phone and she sounds genuinely sorry when she says, "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. But I can't tell you that. It's not about you, I hope you know that. Please tell me you got home safely."

"I didn't, Quinn!" I don't know what is happening to me, but my emotions are all over the place. I'm relieved to hear her, but I'm still angry at her. And I'm disappointed that she'd actually think I would just let her go.

"What?" she asks.

"I'm here!" I yell, confused and frustrated at the same time. "I followed you. I'm in Wyoming, so tell me where you are."

"You followed me?"

"Hm-hmm," I hum, still crying.

"How?"

"What the hell does it matter, Quinn, where the fuck are you!" I yell. An old truck driver turns around and looks at me for a moment.

"I'm in Rock Springs," she says. "What about you?"

"Riverton."

"Alright," she says. Her voice doesn't give away any emotion. "Let's meet up somewhere in between."

"Okay." She mentions a motel she passed on her way to Rock Springs and we decide to meet up there.

My emotions are one huge mess inside my head as I'm driving to the motel. I realize how lucky I am that I actually managed to find her when she could have been anywhere. I'm also lucky that she was close and wanted to meet up. But I'm so angry at her that I start to think I should have gone home when she gave me the chance. I have no idea what I'll do when I see her.

When I get there, I see her standing by a door of the motel. I get out of the car and walk towards her fast. And she is so beautiful in the flickering light of the motel that is lighting up her face. And I walk up to her and wipe the last tears from my eyes and I hug her tightly. I think she might suffocate, but she doesn't complain and she hugs me back all the same. We stand still like that for a few full minutes. Then I let go of her, step back and hit her. I don't know where it's coming from, but I can't help myself. She barely flinches. She just closes her eyes and lets me hit her again. And I start crying loudly, because I never wanted to hit her. I push her at the shoulders, but not too hard. Then I put my hands in my hair and try to breathe normal again. Quinn opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, but she doesn't. She just turns around and opens the door to the motel room. I follow her inside. She sits down on the bed and doesn't look at me for a long time. I'm the first to speak.

"I'm sorry," I sigh. "About… that."

"Yeah," she whispers. "It's okay."

"It's not, though. I shouldn't have hit you. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I get it." She still doesn't look at me. I can't tell if it's because she's sorry or because she doesn't want me to be here. Then I realize she is crying too. And I don't want to forgive her this fast, but I can't help it. I sit down next to her and I put my arm around her, but she doesn't respond. I brush her hair behind her ear and touch the places where my hand hit her. And it feels good to touch her again. To see her again from this close. To know that she's here, right next to me and I won't let her slip away again. Then she looks up and she kisses me.

When she left me, I thought I would never get to feel her lips against mine again. It's not that I thought I'd never see her again, just that we would never be able to get back to normal again. I'm not saying we're okay right now, but I never want this to stop.

"I love you," she whispers.

"Okay, good," I whisper back. She stops kissing me.

"You thought this was about you?" she asks. As I shrug, she lifts my legs onto the bed and lays me down on it. She climbs on top of me and continues kissing me. "I've missed you so much, Rachel," she whispers. "I thought you'd never want to see me again." As much as I want answers, I don't want to ruin the moment.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's note: Wow this is a pretty short chapter. Anyway, sorry for uploading so late. I have been busy with my book. If you're interested in that, message me on my tumblr and I will let you know when and where you can buy it. I have come to realize my writing has really improved since I wrote this. **

"When can we see her?" Dean asked the doctor.

"We really can't tell just yet," he answered. "I'll come get you if you can go in." He turned around and walked away. I could tell by the footsteps. I wasn't looking up. I was staring at the floor, trying to figure out what had just happened.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked me. I didn't answer him. I think he could answer for himself.

"Can I get you anything?" Dean asked. "Coffee? Soup? A candy bar?" The only thing I wanted, was an assurance that Quinn was going to be okay. Or a time machine, so I could have gone back and saved her, so none of this would have happened.

"Coffee's okay," I whispered. It cost me too much to say that, so I decided to keep quiet until that doctor came back.

"It's not your fault," Eric told me as Dean walked away. "You couldn't have done anything." I didn't care whose fault it was or whether I could have done anything.

We waited for hours. Dean called the office in the meanwhile, to inform them about what had happened. He offered to go back to the hotel to get our stuff a while later, so we could get out of here right after Quinn was doing better, but I didn't want him to. It felt like he didn't think she'd make it and he just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Then he congratulated me on probably catching the biggest wolf of my career. I just shot him a murderous look. He and Eric kept talking to each other awkwardly as the time passed by and they tried to leave me alone as much as possible.

After four hours, I snapped. I walked up to the first doctor I could find and I threatened her that I would hurt her if she didn't get me into Quinn's room. The woman said she was sorry, but she couldn't do that and I yelled at her for a minute straight. It didn't help. Then after two more hours of Dean and Eric both sitting next to me in the waiting room, observing me closely, the other doctor came back and told us one of us could go in. If we were family. I jumped up from my chair.

"She's my wife," I said. I didn't know if gay marriage was even legal in Florida yet, but I wasn't going to risk my chance of seeing her.

She was lying in a white bed, that suddenly seemed way too big for her. Her hair was a mess and there was a big cut from her cheek to her forehead, almost crossing her eye. She had a bruise on her hairline. There were several tubes running from her hand to the machinery standing next to the bed. I heard her heartbeat sounding in soft short beeps. It was slow, but steady, like when I'd lay my ear on her chest just to listen.

I pulled a chair over to the bed. Her hand was lying on top of the sheets. I stroked it softly, and then I took it in both my hands. And then I cried. For minutes straight, I cried. And I said to her how sorry and was and I begged her not to die on me. I told her how much I loved her and I needed her. And I begged her not to die on me.

Then I pulled down the sheets a little. I shoved them down to the fringe of her soft blue hospital pants. Then I lifted her hospital shirt and looked at her stomach. It was full of bruises and bandages. She had never looked this frail.

I pulled the sheets back up and I stroked her face. I kissed the bruise on her cheek bone and her lips and every other part of her face that I could reach.

The door opened and a doctor looked inside.

"Your friends would like to know how much longer you'll be in here," he said.

"Tell them I'm staying with her," I said.

_Four months later_

Before I open my eyes, I remember what happened the night before. I am scared to open them. I stretch out my arm, and try to feel her, but I can't feel anything. I shoot up and look. She's lying on the other side. She's here. By my side.

I lie back down and watch as she turns her body to me. She's still asleep, with her one arm under her head and the other clenching her legs. I touch her face and I kiss it softly, and she moves her head a bit so her lips can touch mine. Her sleep reflexes.

I watch her sleep for what feels like an hour and then she wakes up. She opens her eyes and smiles when she sees me.

"Hey," her husky morning voice says.

"Hey," I whisper.

"I've missed this," she says.

"It's only been a few days," I say. If she'd said it to me I would have hit her again, probably. Those few days felt like forever. I don't even know why I said it.

"I don't want to skip a day again," she says. _Then why did you leave me?_

"Can I get you something?" I ask. "Coffee? A sandwich?"

"No, please," she sighs. "I just want to lie here. With you." I kiss her again. And we kiss more. And we cuddle for a while, until she announces it is time to get back on the road.

I take a mental note to never let her out of my sight this time. She won't even get to go to the restroom without me. Wherever she goes, I will come with her and I will not let her go again. It seems unlikely that she will flee once more, but I still feel like I can't take the risk. I tell her to prepare for it.

"You don't trust me?" she says. I hope she means it jokingly as I just look out the front window of the car, still hoping for a clue to where we're going. And I don't say anything. Neither does she. I put the radio a little bit louder to break the silence a little, but it's only making it worse.

"We're going to LA," Quinn suddenly says. She leans over to me to grab her sunglasses from the dashboard. I look at her and I almost start crying again. I kiss her on the cheek. Then I realize this is the first hint she's dropped about our mysterious road trip.

"Why?" I ask.

"Have you ever been?" she asks.

"Yes," I answer. My dads took me almost every summer when I was a kid. We'd go celebrity spotting in the mornings, lie on the beach in the afternoon, and at night, they would leave me in the hotel room and sneak off to the lobby to drink cocktails and dance. Later I got to party with them. They were some of the best times we ever had.

"Then you'd know why," she says. I know she's not driving away from her life, and almost me, just because LA is a fun place to be. There's more behind it, but I've learned that getting information from Quinn goes step by step, and if you try to speed up the process, she will drop you back at the start. At least now I can think more clearly of what she's doing. It's something in LA. Or _someone_.

"Does Sarah live there?" I can't help but ask.

"Oh my God, Rachel," she sighs.

"What, I just figured maybe you weren't running from something. Maybe you are running _to_ someone," I defend myself. I talk fast so she can't interrupt me.

"Rachel, that's ridiculous," she says.

"Is it?" I ask. I don't know why I'm being like this. But we've had trouble over this before. And after all that happened, I don't know half what to think anymore.

"Sarah still lives in Washington, if you want to know." She stays quiet and so do I. And then after a minute or two, she softly adds, "I would never have done any of this to you if I could explain it. But if I were unfaithful, I would have told you. In your face. I'm not like that, Rachel. I don't abuse my power like that."

It was mean of me to bring it back up. I know perfectly well what happened between them and what that did with her. What she did with her. I know how much the subject hurts her, and yet my jealous mind keeps reminding her of it.

"I'm sorry, Quinn," I say.

"It's okay," she whispers. But it's not. Although she'll do her best to hide it as soon as she takes her next breath and says she'll take me to the finest vegan place in LA. But I know her well enough to see through her shield when she's hurt.

I know what it means when she bites her lip a little too hard to call it thinking. I know what it means when she starts pulling at her cuticles, even when she is behind the wheel. I know what it means when she puts on her sunglasses when the sun isn't so bright that it's of any use.

She's sad. Sadder than I have ever seen her, and this time I don't know why. And I don't know what to do about it. Whatever is going on, it's getting at her badly and I don't like it.


	14. Chapter 14

"We're going back to Washington tomorrow," Dean said. "Call us if there's any news, please. And if the situation gets too bad, we'll be right back." I just nodded. I wanted them to leave me alone, but I didn't want them to leave Miami. I didn't want to be alone in a strange city when my girlfriend was possibly dying. But Clayton wouldn't let all three of us stay. He needed his hunters back. He called me too, to tell me he'd come by later that week if she wouldn't wake up before. That meant he would come by later that week.

I hugged Dean and Eric goodbye in the hospital. They would spend their last night in the city, packing their stuff, but they wouldn't have time to step by the next morning. Right before they left, a doctor came to give them a last update. He just said the same thing again. That her state was critical and they basically had no idea when she would wake up. Which was doctor language for _if _she would wake up. They thanked the doctor and hugged me again. And then they left. And I started crying again, so the doctor said I could sit with Quinn for just a little while.

I prayed to no one in particular that she would wake up. Right there, as I was sitting with her. I held her hand and I kept looking at her eyes, impatiently waiting for them to open. I begged her to wake up, but she didn't. I kissed her forehead softly, she looked so frail I thought I might break her if I held her too tight. And after half an hour, the doctor told me it was really time for me to leave now. And I lied and said that I had no place to go, and he let me stay in the guest room.  
I lay down in the sterile smelling bed, knowing there was no way I could possibly sleep like this. And I replayed everything that happened the night before. It had been a miscalculation. He had been too fast, and too strong. He was worse than we had thought. To her, at least. Quinn was a strong person, but she could never have handled this. And I could never have stopped him, even if I had known immediately where he had taken her.

I know that. Yet I can't help but feel it is my fault. And I know it's not. But I could have tried. I could have done more. I could have followed them better. I could have ran in and shot him, even though those are not the rules. I could have stopped her from going at all, even though she wouldn't have listened to me. I could have tried.

I had been so scared of this. Of exactly this. This is what I pictured happening in my worst nightmares. This is why I freaked out when I first heard about the hunt. I knew this would happen. I thought I was too inexperienced to judge, because they had all been so confident, but I knew. I knew it all along and I hadn't done anything. I could have done _something_.

I felt so guilty that I couldn't just lie there anymore. I needed to see her. I needed to know she was going to be okay. I needed to not be in that bed and do nothing but think. I needed not to be alone. I needed her.

I got out of the bed and I walked to the hallway. And I tried to remember the way the doctor had guided me here. But I couldn't remember it, so I tried to find the way myself. And I got lost twice, but then I found her room again. And I almost fell to the ground when I saw it wasn't her in the bed, but an old man, with a grey mustache.

"Excuse me, miss, you can't be here," a female voice behind me said. I turned around and found a nurse looking at me with a frightened face.

"Where's Quinn?" I asked, almost panicking. "Quinn Fabray, where is she?"

"The lady that slept here before?" I felt like hitting her for that comment. But that wouldn't have been of any help.

"Yes, her," I said, hurriedly.

"Uhm, she got transferred to the ICU, I believe," she mumbled, not looking at me, but looking around.

"Why?" I asked. I'd watched enough episodes of Grey's Anatomy to know that didn't mean any good.

"She wasn't getting any better. They needed the room."

"Where's the ICU?" I asked.

"Oh, you can't go there, miss." I sighed and thought of running past her and going there anyway, but I didn't know where it was.

"Can you just," I said, "Please, check up on her for me, okay?"

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes, now!" She mumbled "Okay," and turned around. I wanted to follow her, but it was no use. I couldn't get into the ICU anyway. So I waited there, by her old room, leaning against the wall until the nurse came back.

I waited for almost an hour and I was tired, but I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. I kept walking around in the hallways and I kept looking for the nurse. And when she came back, she told me that Quinn was doing okay, but she just needed a little more surveillance. I doubted if that was what the doctor had told her, but I figured there was nothing I could do. At least she wasn't doing worse.

_Six weeks later_

I walked into the office and they all started applauding again. I couldn't help but smile, but I really didn't see why they were all so excited. I had done a small job with Benji a week before and that morning, we got the news about the wolf's sentence from the judge. It was the first hunt I had done without Quinn. I didn't want to do it at first because I could tell Quinn didn't want me to, but she said it was okay. And then I did want to do it, to make sure I would be okay without her. That I could do it again and not be dependent on her.

Benji walked up to me and he took my hand. He stuck it in the air and bowed. I fake smiled from then on and hoped I could go home soon, since we didn't really have anything to do. Me and Benji went to get a cup of coffee and he talked about the week before a little bit. And I just nodded and said yes at the right times and waited for Clayton to come get me. He said the day before that he needed to talk to me about something. Luckily he came into the cafeteria right after we finished our coffee.

"There you are," he said. "Longo, there's some paperwork on your desk. If you could take a look at it." He said and Benji nodded and walked away. I couldn't remember if I had ever noticed the cafeteria even had a door, but Clayton closed it behind him. I sat down at the table that was closest to the door. He hadn't told me what he wanted to talk about, but I had a clue.

"How is she doing?" he said, in a much more serious tone than usual as he sat down across from me.

"She's uhm… She's better." I lied. I honestly didn't know how she was doing. It just didn't seem to end.

"Did her leg recover well?" He seemed confident talking to me about this, but I could tell he really wasn't. In what he said, I could hear that he had no idea how to handle the situation.

"It did," I said, wanting to continue with 'she's walking fine again', but the words just didn't come out. Then we both stayed quiet.

"I'm sorry, Berry," he said then. "I know the two of you have been more than just work partners lately." Then he was quiet again. And he just looked down at the pen he was holding in his hands. He kept pulling the cap off and it annoyed me, especially because I could sense where he was going with this conversation.

"Listen, I know this question is a little bit out of line maybe, but I would like to talk to her about her returning. Or her not returning."

"Just because she can walk again doesn't mean she's ready to throw herself into another hunt." I didn't mean to sound as angry as I did.

"I know," he said, defensively. "That's why I would like to speak to her personally. She really is one of my best hunters."

"I'll talk to her about it," I said fast. I was getting pretty angry by now.

"Will you? Tell her to call me, please."

"I will. Right now, actually." I stood up and left the cafeteria without saying anything else. I slammed the door behind me and left without picking up my stuff from the office.

When I got to her apartment, Quinn was sitting on the couch with a blanket covering her legs. She had an opened book on her lap, but she was staring at the tv, which wasn't on.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," she said, finally looking up. "You're early."

"Didn't have anything to do anymore," I said. I went into the kitchen to make the both of us some tea and as the water was boiling, I returned to the couch.

"How have you been?" I ask, slipping my hand down her shirt on her back.

"In the half hour you were gone?" she asks. I kiss her head. "Great."

"What's the last time you've taken a shower?" I asked her.

"The other day." I didn't want to say more, because I didn't want to get into a fight again.

"Uhm…" I started. "Clayton came to talk to me." She didn't even move. "He wanted me to ask you-"

"No," she said.

"I know, honey, he just asked me to-"

"Stop." I stopped. "I'm going to bed."

"Quinn, can't we just talk for a moment?"

"I don't want to talk, Rachel." She made her way toward the bedroom. I walked after her.

"You're not okay," I said.

"I'm fine, Rachel, just leave me alone!" she yelled.

"Quinn, please just listen to me."

"You don't know what happened, Rachel!" I wasn't going to say it again. I had asked enough times and it became clear to me that she wasn't going to tell me what happened. She was gonna stay quiet about it so it would be easier for her to move on. Because that's how she thought things worked. She slammed the bedroom door. I suppose that was what she always did. Shut everyone out. But I couldn't take it any longer. I opened the door.

"I think you need help," I said softly.

"Why can't you just fucking leave me alone?" she yelled. She grabbed her hair and started pulling it. "God, Rachel, this is none of your fucking business! This is my problem, okay? I'll work myself through it!"

"You can't just always try to forget about everything and expect to get better Quinn!" I said. "You can try to shut up and fix yourself, but you of all people should know that's not how it works!" She started walking towards me.

"You don't always need to know everything, Rachel!" she screamed. "You don't know what works for me! You don't get to tell me what I need to do, okay? Stop trying to get into my shit all the time!" She never screamed at me like this. No one ever screamed at me like this. She was so loud it hurt my ears and I was pretty sure the neighbors could hear her. And she was so close that I could feel her voice hitting my face as she spoke.

"I'm not trying to get into your shit," I said softly, trying to contain my voice. But it shivered anyway, because I tend to cry when people are angry. And I was really scared that she would do something. I really was scared of her. "I just want you to feel better."

"Well, I can't!" she yelled, a little bit softer. And she was starting to cry too. "I can't feel better. It's happened. It's too late." And then I knew it. What I had suspected all along, she just assured me of it. This had been too much. With all the things that happened to her, she had managed to keep herself together. But this had been the last string. This was it.

"I can't do this anymore," she sighed. "I can't do this anymore, Rachel." And I hugged her. I wrapped my arms around her waist and I let her throw it all out. I let her cry on my shoulder and I didn't say anything anymore. And neither did she. She just sobbed loudly. And I just held her. And I hoped that she really would be okay again.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's note: I'm sorry it keeps taking me so long to upload. The thing is; we're nearing the ending and I haven't written that part yet. I do know what is going to happen, but I don't want to rush into posting stuff in case anything changes.**

"Are we in a hurry to get to LA?" I ask her, an hour after I took the wheel from her. "Do you want to stop somewhere?"

"Not too long," she says. "But I suppose we could use a break." She smiles at me and it almost makes me forget what we're doing.

"I know a place," I say. I have seen the signs for it. My dads always preferred planes, but one time, they drove us all the way to California. It took long, but we had rented a minivan with beds in it and we just turned it into a road trip, instead of our occasional relaxed vacations. When we drove through Idaho, one of my dads took a random turn on this very highway and we wound up by this huge waterfall. I really thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen until we passed the grand canyon on the way back home.

I find the right exit and I take it, not telling Quinn about it. She doesn't seem to mind the surprise.

"You hear that?" I say, as I turn the radio down.

"Is that a waterfall?" she asks. I lean forward to peak around the corner.

"Look," I say, pointing at it. It still is as beautiful as it was back then. The memory makes me smile and I look at Quinn. She looks stunned, in a good way.

We buy some sandwiches in the tourist shop and then we hike to a quiet spot away from the paths that still has a great view on the falls. We sit down on the ground and just stare at the water.

"It's gorgeous," she says. She smiles at me again. I can feel my heart beating faster. I lean over to her and we kiss. It's a long kiss and when we break it, both laugh. And for a while it feels as if we're teenagers again, with not a care in the world. We eat our sandwiches in silence, until she starts talking again.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," she says.

"About what?"

"About leaving out so many things. There are so many things I haven't told you."

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. But thank you for being so patient with me." I shrug. I never realized I had a choice.

"Is there anything you want to tell me now?" I ask, after she looks at me desperately. I took the hint and she answers. "Yes, actually."

"Okay," I say.

"I uhm…" she starts and she's looking at the water again. "After Miami I found out that I…" She swallows hard. I put my arm around her. I can see a tear swelling up in her eye. I kiss her on the cheek and I stroke it, waiting for her to go on. "I was pregnant," she says. I choke on my own breath and my heart drops. I hadn't known what exactly had happened in Miami, but I did have a clue. I just really hoped it wasn't true. I really hoped she hadn't been very active in bed lately because she was just angry with me for not understanding her. I really hoped that he hadn't touched her in any other way than I already knew. But I knew it and I had known it all along. I got so caught up in hoping it wasn't true, that I believed it wasn't.

"I had it taken care of, and," she pauses, "I know I should have told you, but I couldn't. And I'm so sorry, Rachel. I really wish I had." I put my knees up and my elbow on top of them. And I grab my hair to keep my arm steady and I stare at the water as I start crying. I should have been there. I should have saved her, even if it would have brought me in danger. I should have been there earlier. And after all of that, I should have been more open. I should have tried to make her talk more. I should have been there for her. And I should have noticed what was going on.

"Again, Rachel, there's nothing you could have done."

"No, stop saying that," I say. "I should have noticed. I should have been there for you."

"You were there, sweetheart. I just didn't tell you. I was wrong. I should have told you."

"Then why didn't you?" my voice sounds pathetic, but I can't help it.

"I don't know," she says. "I wasn't really there at the time."

I turn myself to her and she does the same and we hug as tight as we can. And she kisses me on the forehead and wipes my tears away. And I just look at her and wonder how she is still so beautiful when she's crying. And I kiss the tip of her nose and she laughs a little bit.

"Are you okay about it now?" I ask. She hasn't been very happy lately, but I don't recall ever seeing her truly happy, except on good times I had alone with her.

"I don't know," she says. "It was still my baby." She slams her eyes down and starts crying again. More this time.

"I…" she starts, but she doesn't finish this time.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Okay," I say. I just hug her again.

_One month before_

"Put this on." A piece of dark green fabric got thrown into my hands before I even had the time to close the door behind me.

"What's this all about?" I said, as I hung up my coat.

"Put it on," Quinn said again. She was wearing a gray cocktail dress which honored her curves very much and she looked amazing. She was blushing again and her eye makeup made them seem bigger than they were.

"You bought me a dress?" She shrugged, smiling at me sweetly. I started taking off my jeans and I heard her mumbling, "I suppose you could use some help there." I felt a warm hand crawling under my shirt. As I came back up she looked me in the eye as she pulled my shirt over my head. And then she kissed me, moving her hands all over my bare back. She drew her fingers under my bra straps to loosen the pressure, but she let me keep it on. Then I got into the dress and she zipped it up, kissing my bare shoulders. It was a gorgeous dress, wide below my waist to my knee.

"I knew you'd look amazing in that," she mumbled, partly to herself, and partly to me. She walked to the table and picked up two glasses of red wine. She gave me one and we both sat down.

"What's the occasion?"

"I'm feeling good," she said. I noticed. She hadn't been so excited in weeks. I don't think I ever saw her that excited, really. "So I'm taking you to Agora." Agora was my favorite place in the city since that first date and I loved how she remembered it. And taking me there tonight was a really great gesture after all that happened. All the pointless fighting and screaming and the blaming each other and ourselves for everything, it was nice to go out again. Especially on her initiative.

"You bought new wine, too?" I asked after I took my first sip. It was the best red wine I had ever tasted and I couldn't help but wonder how much she must have spent on it.

"A special night deserves a special wine," she said. She kissed me for a long time and it gave me a clue as to what she meant by a special night.

We went out and I had my favorite burritos and she had the fake meat pie. She asked me about my day and I said me and Benji we're gonna have to do a lot of paperwork from now. And then I asked her about hers and she said her psychiatrist said that she was making great progress. And that she could go to work again in a week or two if she wanted to.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked her.

"I'll be fine, Rach. Clayton won't be too hard on me." I was still worried, but we weren't there yet. She said she'd call him tomorrow and we ordered our deserts. When the check came, she insisted on paying and I watched her walk to the counter. She really did look better. Maybe it was just a temporary thing, but I loved seeing her that way.

I drove us home and we started kissing before we were even inside. I realized I was right about what kind of special night it would be. We took of our shoes and then she carefully zipped my dress down and I started looking for her zipper. When I couldn't find it, she laughed and moved her hand to her side, beneath her armpit, and she zipped herself down. We made it to the bedroom without falling over and I quickly pulled her dress over her head. And she took mine. And we lay down on the bed. She kissed me more roughly and we twisted our tongues around each other. Then she stopped and she started kissing my neck and my jaw. She put her leg between mine and started grinding her panties against my leg. She panted in my wetted neck and I accidentally moaned. She panted in my ear and I dragged my nails from the bottom of her back to her shoulders. She shivered, pressing harder against my leg. Her hand went down to my panties and she started stroking me softly. I started panting too, but then her breathing changed.

"Are you okay?" I asked, realizing she was crying.

"Hm hmm," she hummed, her husky voice cracking.

"No, baby, what's wrong?" I held her back tightly and she stopped moving. I could feel her panties were wet against my leg.

"I'm tired," she said.

"Is that why you're crying?" She rolled off of me and lied down on her back beside me. She pulled me against her and kissed me again. That meant she didn't want to talk. That she wasn't going to tell me what was wrong and that she was too turned on to stop what we were doing. So I kissed her back and took the lead. I touched her stomach and softly traced down to her panties. Her stomach shivered. I got on top of her and took off her panties. Then I kissed her again, slowly moving from her lips to her cheek, which my hair got stuck against because of the tears. And I slowly moved down, kissing her jaw and her neck. And then her collarbone and her chest. And I took off her bra and kissed the places it had been against all day. And she moaned, but not accidentally. She needed me. I was teasing her horribly. I kissed her stomach until I reached her thighs, and I decided not to kiss them too, but to move on to the most important part.


	16. Chapter 16

We got back into the car after we stopped at the waterfalls and kept driving towards LA. She is less tense than she was before. I can tell that she's glad she has told me, but also that there is more she hasn't told me. Step by step. We're getting there. We're talking about all kinds of things now and we sing along to the songs on the radio. We occasionally lean over for a short kiss and a shy smile and it's starting to seem more like a casual road trip.

After a while it does get quiet again and I decide to bring it up again, carefully.

"If there's anything else you want to tell me," I start. "I mean, you seem sort of relieved."

"I promise you," she says, "that when this is over, I will tell you everything. And I will never hide anything from you again. I promise."

"Okay," I say. "There's one thing I have been wondering for a long time, though."

"What is it?" she asks.

"Why did Bastian leave? What went wrong?" She had told me about it after we got the briefing for Florida. She tried to calm me down by telling me about one of her previous more dangerous hunts, with Bastian. But she never told me how it ended, and all I knew was that Bastian left the hunters soon after that.

"Oh," she said. "It was like the other time. Except less bad, because I didn't end up in the hospital for so long."

"But he got in, right? He knocked out the wolf. You did it."

"Yeah, he just got in a little too late, that was all."

"What did the wolf do?"

"Oh, he was just violent," she says, looking out the window for a gas station. "Nothing serious."

"Nothing serious?"

"No psychological damage, let's say it like that. I was fine, honestly, but Bastian couldn't handle it anymore. Something had gone wrong before with another partner and he felt too responsible. I think he's just a cop now. I haven't really seen him since he left."

"You fought back, right?"

"Of course," she smiles. "I kicked his ass."

"You really love being a hunter, don't you?" I ask.

"I did," she says.

"But?" I say, surprised by her answer.

"But a person can only handle so much of it."

"You want to quit?" I ask. I never thought I would get her to say this.

"Most hunters don't stay very long, Rachel. They like to tell you that you will get stronger and your skin gets thicker, but at some point it's all gone, you know. All of that. And maybe it has never been there, I don't know, but I guess there was this part of me that loved to use it as a shield. I was being tough in order to make it seem like I was okay. But I don't need that anymore."

She would never have told me that a week ago. She would never have admitted to being done with her job. She wouldn't have made me believe it was over, and I doubt she would have believed it herself. But she isn't lying to me and I can tell from the sound of her voice. And I truly think she does believe it.

"Is that what we're running away from?" I ask her.

"No," she says. "But the more I think about it, the more I feel like we won't go back."

As it's getting darker, I start fumbling at the radio to get more suitable music. And I don't know what it is that this keeps happening, but there's the song again. Phil Collins is with us again.

"Oh my God," Quinn says softly.

"You remember?" I ask.

"Of course I remember. I fell in love to this song."

"Pull over," I say.

"What?"

"Pull over." She pulls over and I turn the radio to its maximum volume. We step outside and stand in the front lights of the car, in the middle of the desert.

"Take a look at me now," I sing softly into her ear as we slow dance in circles.

"I'm so sorry," she says suddenly. "I never realized how accurate this song must have been for you."

"Pretty accurate, yes." I smile at her. "But you came back to me, against all odds. So that must mean something."

"Benji thought I was crazy that night," she says after a few seconds. She laughs. "He was trying to hit on you and I made a bet with him. And he challenged me to try first. And now here we are. He never even got his chance."

"You knew?"

"You were staring at me like a complete idiot the first time we met, Berry. You were too busy staring at my ass each time I walked in front of you, you didn't even notice I saw. Do I even have to remind you of our shooting lessons?" I laugh.

"You knew before I did." And I try to understand how that could be. That she knows me so well, even when we had just met, that she knew she could get me before I did. And it wasn't about the fact that she is a woman and I am too. It was about a level of attraction that rose above us. I don't know how it came to this, but the closest that comes to it is fate. No one could ever know me better than she can, not even me. And I can't even imagine what my life would be if I hadn't found her. And for the first time in my life, I realize what they mean by soul mates. And though I have always found it so stupid to believe in fate and all of that, I can't think of any other reason why she went so easy on me. She suits me like a glass slipper and a tree on Christmas eve. She is the most logical thing in my life and she is with me, and I will make sure she will always be.

The song ends and we get back in the car after another kiss.

"We will be there by five in the afternoon tomorrow," she states. No more breaks now.

_Four months before_

"They're letting me go," she said, smiling at me faintly as I walked through the door of her room. She got out of the ICU two days after she got into it and she really seemed to be doing better. Even though I had already heard the news, it still felt like a relief when she said it and I skipped over to her bed. She swung her legs off the side. I took her face in my hands softly and kissed her on the lips.

"Are you ready?"

"Did you get our suitcases?" I hadn't asked her whether she wanted to leave right after she could, but I figured after all that happened, she would be fine with flying back to Washington that same night. I was right.

"They're on the hallway," I said.

"Okay," she said. I took her clothes from my bag and waited as she went to the bathroom to put them on. When she got out we thanked the nurses who had helped her over the past couple of days and I took both suitcases from the ground. She offered to carry one, but I saw she was still limping her leg and I insisted. She didn't offer again. I asked her if she wanted to go somewhere, since the flight I had Clayton book for us only left at 8 that night.

"I just want to see the ocean," she said. So we left the hospital and headed to the beach. It wasn't as warm as it had been the rest of the week, but it was still nice for people who were used to the Washington weather. There were fewer people on the beach for the same reason, which was nice, because we could sit in peace without getting hit by beach balls or frisbees. I kissed her cheek and she swallowed and smiled at the same time, looking at the water instead of me. Her mouth smiled, but her eyes were completely empty. Not sad. Just empty.

After a while, I got up to buy us some lunch at the nearest place that sold lunches and when I came back with two pudding buns, she started talking.

"When we got here with my family," she said, "before we even got to my grandma's house, we would go to this beach. And then my father would say the last one to reach the water would have to do the dishes at grandma's that night. We knew we never had to, because grandma wouldn't let us, but we always ran as fast as we could, taking off our shoes on the way to the water. It always frustrated my mom because our shoes would get lost on the beach, but in that moment it didn't matter. We forgot about everything when we were running." It was the first time she ever told me about her family. About her father, at least. We had talked about my family, my dads came by every month to see how I was doing and they saw Quinn too. And they adored her. But we never spoke of her family and I had never met her parents. I had wondered if I had to call them when she was in the hospital, so I called Benji about it, but he told me I didn't want to do that. I didn't ask Quinn about it. It would come. Step by step.

"That's a nice memory," I said. She kept staring at the water and then she got up. She walked over there slowly. I wasn't sure if that was because her leg hurt too much, or because she wanted to relive the memory slowly. Like she could bring it back if she thought about it deeply enough. Her eyes looked absent like that. I stood up and followed her at the same pace.

When she reached the water, she crouched down and touched it. The waves washed against her bare feet. If a larger one came up, she would be soaked to her knees, but she didn't seem to care. As I looked at her face, I saw she was more absent than before. She kept touching the water and she was breathing heavily. She touched the water as if it was some special kind of material. Right when I thought she was about to dive in, I touched her shoulder and she stood up immediately. She turned around without looking at me and stated, "I wanna go home."


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's note: Sorry I haven't updated in like two months. I have been away (to the US) and I have been busy finishing my book (my actual book no fanfiction woah). I just realized I have been posting this story for over a year. Oops. I'm sorry about that.**

We stay the night in a chique hotel near Las Vegas. As soon as we wake up we get ready to go. And when we hit the highway again, she starts talking. I didn't ask. She finally realized we are too close for her to keep it from me.

"I told you I was being chased, right?" she says.

"Sort of, you said."

"Right," she continues. "The thing is, I'm not. Not really. It's not like that."

"Okay," I say. I can do nothing but hope she'll tell me everything this time. I can tell she has prepared herself for this talk. Probably since before she even left. She sounds confident, more than scared, as she continues.

"When we were at the lake, I told you about my childhood. And you asked me what happened after. And I left out the most important part of it. I didn't want to tell you then, it just really wasn't the right time, but I'll tell you now. And after this, Rachel, I promise there will be no more secrets." She looks at me, and she wants me to trust her. And I think of the past few days and I remember how it felt and I want to hate her. But then I think of the past few months. And it may have taken me this long, but this is it. I have finally unfolded her completely. And all I have to do to get all of it, is listen to her. So I take her hand and squeeze it softly. And she tells me.

"I got pregnant in high school. I'd never had a great relationship with my parents since Liv's accident, but that was it for them. For my dad at least. I moved in with my boyfriend Chad and his parents for a while, but it didn't work out. He wasn't good for me. And I mean really not good. I moved out of there soon enough. Once the baby was born, I gave her up for adoption. I didn't tell Chad about it. He was so angry with me when he found out. So I just ran off again." She stares out of the windshield. I can't see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I can hear in her voice that she's having trouble not to cry.

"He never saw her. I used to go to her birthday parties until she turned six."

"Why did you stop going?" I can't help but ask. I would be more shocked about everything she just told me, but honestly after all that has happened, I'm not that surprised.

"I don't know. I didn't really feel comfortable. I just missed her. It was good seeing her, but it hurt, too."

"How old is she now?"

"She turned eleven last month."

"Where does she live?"

"Some town in the south of Ohio," she says. "Anyway, the thing is, a few weeks ago, Chad called me. I don't know how he found me, but he wanted to see her. And at first I thought that was fine, but when I told him I didn't have her number or exact address, he got mad at me. And I got scared, because it reminded me of the things he said and did back then. And I knew I couldn't let him see her."

"So you left?" I ask.

"I did what I do best. I felt pressured and I needed to get out of DC. I ran off like I always do. But I had no idea where to go. I just started driving home for some reason. Then I moved on, because I was afraid he might find me. And then I wanted to stop, because I couldn't do it like that. It was useless and reckless. So I called him."

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to know what he wanted. And then we decided to meet up in LA, because that's where he lives now, apparently."

"You're going to meet him?" After what she just told me, it doesn't seem like the best idea. "What are you gonna say to him?"

"I just want to have a normal conversation with him. I want to know how and what he is doing. I mean, I still care for him in a way, you know? And then I will tell him that she is all right, that she came into a loving family and that she looked great the last time I saw her. And if he wants to meet her, I can arrange something, I think."

"I thought you didn't want him to see her," I said, confused.

"I did, too. But it's not fair, Rachel. It's his daughter. It's not up to me whether he gets to see her."

"But what will he do?"

"All I know is people change. And when I talked to him on the phone two days ago, he sounded sincere. And he deserves a chance. I guess he needs this to move onto something new, like I needed you." At first that sounds like it makes sense, but then I think about it and realize that nothing new happened to her after I came into her life. The way she said it made it sound like what I did all those months ago. Chad needs to see his daughter so he can start again. I needed an extreme career change to get my life back on its tracks. But I wasn't that change for Quinn.

"What do you mean?"

"Hm?" she hums.

"What something new did you need me for?" I ask.

"Oh," she says. "It's- I haven't actually thought it through yet."

"What?"

"I'm thinking about quitting the hunters."

_Five days ago_

Quinn had been back to work since the beginning of the week. We weren't assigned anything, we just got to help the others out, since I was still on a rest from the small hunt I did with Benji and Quinn only just got back. She had slept in my apartment the night before her first day back, like she had been for weeks. We left for work together, but yet all she did all day, was sit in her chair at her desk, twirling it from the left to the right, staring at me. Which I was okay with, but it still felt peculiar.

She didn't look sad or anything. She was just staring, and I could tell that she was thinking, because her jaw was sticking out a bit. I asked her things about the case I was working on and she kept telling me I was doing great, and I didn't need her help. I didn't say anything about it, because right before lunch time, she said, half to me and half to the air surrounding her, "I feel happy," and that was all that mattered.

"That's great," I said.

"What?" she shook her head to get rid of her daze.

"Let's get some lunch, dreamboat," I said, and I took her hand to pull her out of her chair. I think she kept staring at me in the cafeteria, but I was too busy shielding off the questions Benji, Norah and Dean asked her to keep track of it. She didn't say much herself, but she smiled at them and appreciated their concern. I knew that she had missed them during her time away from work.

The other days were the same, Clayton was still keeping her tight, waiting for her to start functioning the way she did before. He was convinced it would happen, because she had been through worse stuff before. I wasn't so sure. But when we finished lunch on thursday, and everyone started back to the office, she grabbed my wrist and whispered in my ear, "It's so boring in there. Let's get out of here."

I didn't know this side of Quinn yet. She was always pretty serious about getting to work on time and doing exactly what was asked of her. I figured that she is pretty fond of routine in her life and I was glad, because so am I.

I'm not sure if it was her mesmerizing voice, or the fact that it really was really boring in the office, but I could not resist her proposal. We snuck to the elevators and when the doors closed, she softly pressed me against the mirrored wall and kissed me. She kissed me quite roughly until we heard the soft bing of the elevator and the doors opened. I was too stunned to even walk, but she just walked out like nothing happened at all.

That was one of the things I admired about her as much as it made me feel insecure. She had built her walls so high and solid, that she could turn from a loving human being into a business robot in less than a second. That's why she was so amazing at her job. That's why I started liking her in the first place. That mysterious mask that was hiding her from the world. The possibility that I could maybe figure out what that was and how she did it, better than any of my costars on Broadway ever did. The feeling of getting so close to lifting it off of her face once and for all. And even though she was surprising me a lot in that moment, it still felt like I had unraveled her. And it was so exciting and amazing, that I knew wherever she would take me from then on, I would follow her. Because I had just discovered her and I had something to hold on to. And I was not about to let her go.

She drove us to the beach. The last time we had been to the beach was in Miami, when she was dismissed from the hospital. She had been so closed and vulnerable, and I was worried it was all about to fall apart again. She had wanted to let me go just days before.

"When we were in Miami," I said, when we sat down on the sand in a quiet place. I hadn't thought of how I was going to finish my sentence, but I wanted to see her face first. And her face looked like she didn't want to talk about that right now. But she didn't say it, because a lot of things happened in Miami and I could have meant all of them.

"That fight we had," I said, because I still hadn't really figured out how to say it.

"I got that figured out," she said fast.

"But we never talked about it again," I said softly.

"I've been working out things quietly," she explained. "That was one of them. It's not that I wasn't over her, Rachel. I loved you then as much as I do now. It was just that I still had a hard time trusting people with my heart, and the hotel brought back memories. I'm sorry I've been so messed up, but I promise it'll be over soon. I'm working on it."

"Okay," I whispered, smiling at her. If I hadn't known her so well, I would have thought that her quiet way of dealing with things wasn't the right way to. But I have learned that for her, it is probably the best way.

"Now tell me," she said. "Which restaurant in this state would you go to if it was your last day on earth?"

"I think you know that," I smiled.

"Really?" she said. She had known by looking at my face which place I had meant. The restaurant she took me on our first date. "You wouldn't want to try something new?"

"If it was my last day on earth," I spoke, "I would want everything in it to remind me of you."


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's note: This was supposed to be the part that inspired me to write the whole thing (aside from the whole entire song by The Script). There was supposed to be a lot of suspense and action in Quinn meeting Chad, but it didn't make sense to me anymore and the story became so much more than what I had anticipated at first, so I decided it was irrelevant. I'm sorry if this is an anticlimax, but I guess in the end it was more about the journey to me. (This is not the end, though. I haven't written the ending yet, but there will be about two more chapters.)**

Quinn wanted to see Chad on her own. I offered her to come for protection, if necessary, but she told me this wasn't like one of our hunts and there was nothing to save her from. She only wanted me to pick her up afterwards, because what she did need was comfort and only I could give her that.

I brought her to the cafe they were meeting and let my eyes follow her inside to see Chad. They greeted each other like old friends do, with a short hug. He was a handsome man with dark hair and bright eyes. I let my worries go, because they were in public and nothing could happen. Plus she promised me she would hold on to her phone the entire time. So I drove back to the hotel and waited patiently for her call.

I picked her up a bit more than an hour after that. Chad was already gone. She said it was nice to have seen him again, but I could tell from her eyes that she was also a bit upset. I took her back to the hotel right away and ran us a bath, because neither of us had a bath at home and I knew she missed it. When we were in it, I asked her how she felt.

"I'm okay," she said. She did look okay, but her expression looked tangled.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," and she nodded, still hiding deep inside her mind. "I'm relieved, I think. I guess I needed this too, not just him."

"Did you tell him where Beth lives?"

"I gave him her mother's number. It's not up to me whether he gets to see her. It's up to her." I nodded. She stayed quiet, staring through the bathroom wall behind me with her hand behind her neck. And then she started laughing. And she took a deep breath and I heard it quiver. And then a sound came out that I could not quite place. But she still smiled as her eyebrows sunk.

"He didn't…" I didn't want to finish the sentence. She knew what I meant because we had both been scared of it. But we also both trusted he wouldn't do anything to her. And only now it occurred to me that we might have been wrong.

"No!" she said. "Just-" She choked on the word. "Memories." And I wanted to hate Chad and her parents and that damned lake back in Ohio she took me to and Sarah and the Miami hunt and everything that had ever hurt her, but there was no use. It is all in the past and all there is I can do about it, is try to make her future better than that.

"It's over now," she said then. "I think it's really over now." And she laughed again, with tears streaming over her cheeks. I have never seen so much emotion flowing from one person, let alone from Quinn.

They say love is the greatest emotion in terms of how hard it hits you and how much it changes you, whether it's because you gain it or lose it, but I can't believe that after seeing her like this right across from me.

I think relief, of all the feelings in the world, has the strongest impact on the human heart.

_ "__A little change every now and then is okay, but don't you think this is a little bit drastic?" _Oh daddy, if I had listened to you.

Sometimes you look back on things you did and decided in the past and you stop to realize where that has got you so far. And you think of how small the chance is that you would have done what you're doing now if you had done things the slightest bit differently.

Let's face it, I could have done a million other things to throw my life around at that time. My boyfriend and I had ended up in a funk. We knew neither of us would be okay if we kept going on the way were. He wanted to work on it, see a therapist with me once a week. He wanted to fight for me and said it wasn't too late yet. I could have stayed with him and let him fight for me. Sometimes I think we could have been married by now.

But I didn't stay with him. I didn't want that. I was afraid we would never be anything else than we were at that moment. We could never change after we had settled that far. So I told him it was best if we broke up. I got my own apartment in Manhattan when I had three more weeks on stage with Les Miserables. And when those three weeks ended, I did nothing. I got offers for other musicals and I could have embraced those offers and stayed on Broadway. I could have done another show of Funny Girl. I was even asked for Wicked. I could have taken all those offers and I could have shone on Broadway for years and years after.

But I didn't take them. I realized I didn't want them. I didn't know what I wanted, but it was not Broadway. I was longing for something else. I didn't know what it was. I think there was something very specific, but I simply didn't know what it was. I waited tables for a while, but that was not what I wanted either. I could have traveled the world, I sure had enough time and money for that. I could have moved to California to try and make it in the film business. I was offered some movie roles before. I could have moved back home, or to the south, to live on an organic farm for the rest of my life. I loved the peace and calm around farms. I could have found another man, making him choose my destiny for me, so I wouldn't have to choose.

But I didn't do any of those things. I thought maybe what I was longing for was more excitement in my life. I could have tried to join the army, but I would never have made it in. And honestly, I did not expect to be let into the hunters club, but I did, after two rough months of training and interviews and tests. I could have given up then. I did realize that being a federal agent was probably not my thing, but I didn't want to give up on it. I kept going. Looking back, I don't know why I was so determined to get there.

I think you can call it destiny, when everything seems to move out of your way to let your blind mind guide you through it, to bring you to where you belong. It's like the ocean split in two to let me through. The hunters club was not my destiny. But I found something so much more valuable because of it.

Maybe there is such a thing as soul mates. And maybe there is a higher power above us all to guide us to them. Maybe God has led me down this path because it was all I ever needed to do. Like this was all I ever needed to achieve in my life. You could say it's against all odds. But maybe it's serendipity.

It's the only way I could have found her again, after she ran away. I just drove across the country and destiny led me to her. It's the only reason I didn't stop. It's the only reason I never gave up on her. It's the only reason I would always follow her, even if it seemed like everything was holding me back. It wasn't chance. It was fate.

We got out of the bath when our fingertips were wrinkled and our butts were senseless. It was too early for dinner, but Quinn was feeling well, and therefore so was I, and I took her to one of the best restaurants in Santa Monica I could remember from when my dads took me there. Luckily, they had quite an elaborate lunch menu. The chef was already there. The waiter had to discuss with him if we could eat dinner yet, and he came back to tell us it was fine. We laughed at his confused expression and we kept joking around until the waiter brought us the bill. There was nothing serious left to discuss, and we didn't want to. Like she had said, it was finally over and we could finally start for real.

"Do you remember that song that we danced to?" I asked her, when we walked beneath the pier on our way back to the hotel. There was noise all above us, the people on the pier were laughing and the roller coaster rushed above our heads with screaming people in it, but aside from the sound of the waves, our voices were alone in the air between the wooden poles. It was kind of an out of the blue question, I realize, but the song had been playing in my head nonstop for the past couple of days and I wanted to know if she remembered.

"Phil Collins," she said. "God, what a sappy song." She laughed.

"It started playing in the car after you left the motel room."

"Oh," she says. "I'm sorry. It must have been pretty accurate."

"Well, not really." I let go of her hand and put my arm around her waist. "There's not just an empty space. I had enough things that reminded me off you, not just the memory of your face. And you came back to me, against all odds."

"That's not against all odds."

"No?"

"No. I'll always want to take a look at you now." She laughed and I joined her. I was right. There was no way Phil Collins could understand how it felt, chasing the idea of her. Because I wasn't about to face the fact that she was gone. I still had hope. And I didn't give up on her. We had a chance, and neither of us was planning to let us sink.


End file.
